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Sketchbook experiments: watercolor, colored pencil, and metallic paint
Well, of all the days I was sure I might skip out on painting or posting to my blog, today was it. I almost skipped online dance class — just feeling tired and anxious. I’m also stressed about the weather disasters happening around the country (and hoping things get better for so many people suffering this week). I decided that I wouldn’t try to make progress on my painting from yesterday, but instead would experiment and try stuff out to better prepare for working on it tomorrow.
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Watercolor Skin Tone Practice
I swatched several different skin tone blends before painting in the figure of my current work in progress, hoping I wouldn’t make the skin too blotchy, as seems the case with most of my watercolor skin tone efforts. Alas… I still overworked the paint and it’s still blotchy. I think I keep trying to treat watercolor like digital painting, and then I push too far and overwork it. Blah. More blending practice is necessary!
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Adding a Background (at the last minute)
Well, I was hoping I’d be further along with this painting, but I became quite distracted with painting a soothing pattern in the background. I didn’t originally plan this sketch/painting to have a background – it was more about studying cloth folds – but I decided to go for it. In my mind, the character was standing in the palace of Versailles in a chemise*. So it wasn’t so much picking a background at random, in as much as it was trying to feel what would be around the character I had in mind. I also decided to make her expression a bit less melancholy.
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Finishing WIPs!
I had two works in progress hanging out there from this week – the sunset clouds digital painting (from Thursday’s post) and then the current sketchbook page (from yesterday). Even if I’m not practicing new ideas, I’m glad I used some time today to finish both of these up. It’s satisfying to consider drawings or paintings finished before moving on to a different study. No nagging lose threads!
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Mermaid Wanderings
Yay, watercolor paintings! These mermaid pieces are from October of last year – again trying to catch up on my 2020 art sharing. I’m happy with how flow-y the hair turned out on all three pieces. I felt extremely rusty with using watercolors, and the background of vague seaweed shadows on the first painting was…ugh. Still, even feeling rusty, there are things I can find things I like about the first painting: the light and shadow on the tail and the jewelry pattern.
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I just want to watch more of The Magicians
The full moon was so pretty driving home from Zumba class. While driving back, I wondered: what will I do with my night and how productive will I be after dinner? Honestly, I felt wiped and fired up Netflix after eating; if I could spend my whole night watching The Magicians, I think I would. But I took a break and sketched a little – the water brush is growing on me 🙂