Studio Kit

I'm pleased with the bunny (and really pleased with my drawing)

but I screwed up the grass because I couldn't leave well enough alone.

Augh!

I'm catching up again! This is my day 19 and 20 of world watercolor month, I thought I'd do an abstract. The eagle eyed among you may have spotted that I did a fabric version a couple of months back - I showed you a sneak peek then. It's finished now, but you know me - I'm behind on posting!

Anyway - it was doing these abstract watercolors on fabric that made me decide to pursue learning how to watercolor on paper in the first place. So here's a paper version. :)

The paper I used for this painting is twice as large as what I've been using all month, so it took me twice as long! :)

If I seem to be a bit obsessed by foxes at the moment, I am. lol Of course, this one is more like the baby of a fox and cat, which may explain why current obsession given my love of cats!

It's interesting - I read this article by a watercolor artist (I've read so many lately, I can't remember who it was) - and he said that you should spend 50% of your time on your drawing: that your painting will never get better than your drawing. This makes sense to me (if you're the type of watercolourist who draws first, which I am).

And as if to prove him right; I had a really difficult time drawing the face on this fox - getting it at just the right angle, with his face snugged up into the corner of the tree was beyond my current abilities.

Eventually, I gave up on all of my scratching and erasing - I was seriously afraid to damage the paper. And sure enough, when I painted it - the painting was worse than the drawing. Alas.

So I have a kitty-fox tucked up in a tree. :)

I thought I'd share a textile painting commission that I finished back in May. This is Queen Nanny Maroon, holding her horn to summon her forces, hiding in the Blue Mountains behind her.

I loved making this piece, and am so grateful to Black Lives Matter for commissioning the piece from me.

Kit

P.S. And if you've managed to find me here after my accidentally deleting my 8 year old blog (!) *cries* Thank you!

P.P.S. - I'm putting this here in order to "move" my blog followers on Bloglovin. *waves*

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Why so serious?

Tonight, as I was trying to figure out what to paint for today's watercolor, I realized that in my pursuit of getting "better", I was losing me.

So, I decided that just for tonight, I would make something that made my heart happy - not worry about whether it was "good", or an "improvement", or whether I was learning something - so I painted that crappy background, acknowledged it was crappy, and kept on going. Then I just let go, and painted that totally adorable elephant, and then I painted the balloon.

And I lost the plot. lol I worked and worked and worked and overworked that balloon, for literally hours (including the time for the layers to dry) and at one point I sat back and realized that was the best I was going to get without totally destroying the paper, which is when I realized that I'd completely forgotten what the point of the evening was.

So I have a really cute elephant as a result of just letting go; and a balloon that is so HEAVY that poor little elephant would fall out of the sky as a result. lol

P.S. - this was my inspiration photo:

(which I found on one of those wallpaper sites) :)

Day 15. Phew! It feels like me, and I actually like it.

:)

I've discovered that I get the best results when I'm not totally exhausted. Go figure.

I do find that this process is a bit too much, actually. Painting every day wouldn't be so hard if I knew what I was doing. But I have no time for my real art, either. And I'm starting to think that what I need is a drawing class, not a watercolour class!