……experimenting with watercolour
Sometimes I’m not sure whether I should add colour to my sketches or not. This evening I took a chance and put some colour into my daffodils. Do you have a preference? Leave the sketch as is or add colour? I’m thinking of adding colour to the bouquet that I did here.
…..days 42 and 43
Yesterday I left the house at 8:00 in the morning and didn’t get home till almost 8:00 in the evening. I spent the day cross country skiing but almost five hours of my day was spent on a bus getting to and from the ski centre. On the way home I pulled out my phone and my sketchbook and looked up some photos I had taken of flowers that I thought might make good subjects for sketching.
It was pretty dark in the bus so it was a good opportunity to work on my blind or semi-blind contour drawing skills.
Today I took those drawings and redrew them in a larger sketchbook, adding more detail and shading. With the rose I added colour with watercolours.
…..days 38 and 39
I started these late last night and then finished in the wee hours of this morning. So I guess that still counts as a painting a day.
I’ve always liked the simplicity of Chinese Brush Painting but there’s nothing simple about it. I can see why Chinese artists take years to master their craft. I took this book out of the library as a reference. It’s beautifully illustrated but I’ve discovered that I’m not very good at following directions from a book. I’m in too much of a hurry to take the time to read all the directions. I’m much better with a video demonstration but I did enjoy this process so I think I will go back and read some of the chapters.
…..days 36 and 37
Not everything that I make do I necessarily like. This is a journey of learning and practising skills in art. I started with watercolour still life and then landscapes when I started painting at 50. I’ve dabbled in so many different art genres that I haven’t mastered one. I’m going back to basics. Here are two studies of apples and bananas. I need to keep practising.
…..day 33
Today’s class with Carla Sonheim was to create art papers using text. I enjoyed this process. I used watercolour paper and a variety of pens and ink to create these papers. I found a couple of poems in my Roald Dahl Treasury and I copied them onto some of the sheets. The idea is to fill the paper with words and try not to leave too much white space. I plan to use some of these in my next collage assignment.
….day 24
I went back to Creative Bug and decided to attempt another pattern done in watercolour. This one was pretty open ended. Lisa Congdon encouraged us to try and not copy her piece but come up with our own colours and shapes. I think I’d like to try this with acrylics next time or maybe even do one in collage.
…..day 23
In Carla Sonheim’s on-line class today the prompt was ‘I’m a circle’. She provided a link that showed the origins of the yellow smiley face. If you’re interested go here.
I decided to continue practising painting free hand with watercolour and of course I chose the circle. I purposely overlapped the circles to see how the watercolours would react and then I drew in the smiley faces in-between the circles.
