Thirty Days of Painting: day 8, 9 and 10

Day 8: Bread on watercolour

Very quick and dull activity this day - I promise the next two days are actually worth looking at.

Day 9: Watercolour pencil over watercolour wash over sketch

I have started a new art class, and he liked my sketches and suggested I tried letting the pencil show through and apply watercolour pencil for the detail. Didn't do it the way I imagined, but the results are interesting enough to look at.

Grey-led sketch

Watercolour pencil over the top

 Day 10: applying water

A little wet, and Didn't know what to do with the chest. It just looked weird, so I added her jacket which is on the image. Enjoy!

Thirty days of painting: Day 7

Day 7: Masking liquid

The preparation for this was done over a couple of days. I found the inspiration whilst going through watercolour technique boards and found a very cute blog, which many Pinterest searchers may have found already, as it's on the first page of Google.

What was used:

Watercolour paper

A sketch of a portrait

Watercolour paint

Number 18 synthetic round brush (cos, you know, they're all different)

A light box

Masking tape

Board

Step one: Have a portrait sketch

Ta-da!

Step 2: Mask the paper

Placing the sketched image under the watercolour paper. Using an old brush, paint over all the light areas of the face, as well as the hair highlights, with the masking fluid.

A watercolour teacher informed me that putting blobs of paint over the image will create an interesting effect. I wanted to see how it'd turn out.

Leave to dry for a few hours or over night.

The lighting isn't spectacular on this one.

Step 3: Paint over the image with watercolour

 As you can see, the blob-effect didn't work out the way I had planned. This is probably be because, for the blobs, I used student watercolour instead of artists watercolour. Once dry, the student watercolour does not un-dry. However, artist's watercolour is soluble no matter how long you leave it.

You can see much more of how the figure will look. Again, not a good image due to energy-saving kitchen lighting.

Step 4: Remove the masking fluid

 ITS COMING ALIVE!

 SHE LIVES!

I'm not nearly happy about the left eye as I am with the right. The more masking fluid I used, the globbier the brush became as the latex dried over the bristles. By the time I was onto the left brush, all that came off my brush was large chunks, and I didn't have much control at all. I may have to look into some kind of foam brush.

This is a very good example of how different artist's quality paint verses student quality paint looks. I am quite surprised at how different it looks, even the blobs on the page look so much duller than it's surroundings.

I know what you may be thinking - it's a different blue, of course it'd end up looking duller!

So, I've gotten some image of other things I have painted using "terquoise" paint so you can compare the difference for yourself. Used  by the same scanner and everything.

Thirty Days of painting: Days 4,5 and 6

Day 4: Watercolour and salt

This one took me a couple of attempts. The paint has to be dark enough and thick enough to really get the absorbed affect. It's probably better to use artists quality paint, unless you use it thickly straight from the tube. I'm quite happy with the effect this one has made.
Crimson and ultramarine blue.

Day 5: Watercolour blow painting

Though, I actually ended up using acrylic. I think the advantage of watercolour I would have gotten is that I could have added more paint into the faded areas instead of making an entire new layer due to acrylic's fast-drying nature. For this reason, I'd more likely to do watercolour over a wash of acrylic instead of the other way around. Theoretically, watercolour is water-soluble even after drying, unless you're using cheap, children quality or student quality paint, (which I did.)

It's funny how much I'm actually learning about how paint reacts to each other just by doing these simple little things. Surely I'll be an expert in no time! 

Day 6: Gravel effect

It doesn't look much like gravel, it was a good effect to practice.

This one was a layer of acrylic paint, dried, then with a sponge painted with a layer of darker-coloured paint, lightly dabbed the surface of it onto the paper.

I would have liked a darker layer, and one that I did not have to dab twice. That lost it's effect instantly. I coloured in some of the circles to create the look of stones. It didn't work nearly as well as the artist's idea in the book, but it's a good technique to have tried and to know where I went wrong.

Thirty days of Paint: Day 2 and 3

Very small, basic experiments that I make specifically to NOT be a masterpiece is quite liberating. I'm not in the mind-set of this must be a work of art or else I have wasted my time.

Day 2: Much of the same 

Wet on wet acrylic with water colour over the top. Acrylic is a permanent, where as the green could be taken off with water. Lesson in permanency.

Day 3: Splatter painting

Inspired by My Flower Journal, experimenting with splatter. Came out with a very random creation, not nearly as excellent as Tammy Northrup's, but then again, she is well practiced at them.

Have done three so far, 10% there!

Thirty Days of Painting: Day 1

Breaking the perfectionism

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Not much, but just a bit. Enough to make me feel self conscious about having a blog about my creations, anyway. And, sometimes, if I don't have a finished artwork, one that looks good, that's world changing or good enough that it might be shown at the Met, the Louvre and the Guggenheim whilst people are pirating it and selling mugs of it on eBay, I don't feel like it's worth painting.
This is something I need to get over, because as a learner artist, that is everything I create. What's detrimental about this mindset is that it doesn't give me mistake room. If it's not good enough, I don't show it, I don't learn, I don't try new things.
This must stop. Now.
So, for the next thirty days, I will be posting small paint experiments to get the artistic juices flowing, to force me to move forward.
Bare with me, Okay?

Day 1: Cling wrap relief texture.

Easily done - apply a single wash of watercolour, grab some cling wrap, scrunch it up a bit, then place it over the top until dry.

I was going for something I could use for a random marble effect, but I don't think it'll do. Probably better used for a cracked look, where a painting or a wall has started to peal away and expose the board underneath.

Stay tuned in for tomorrow's painting experiment!

Sketch Study Saturday

This week I'm posting a study of different lips, some male, some female. Can you tell which is which?