Posts in Category: sketch
She wears a red bandana
She wears a red bandana
Second quick watercolor sketch from Charles Reid book. This one was harder because first I got in trouble with my drawing and had to start over. Then my pigments wouldn’t give me as dark of a mark as I wanted. So I went over some areas again to build value and it shows.
Another new happening for me – for this sketch I dispensed with my porcelain palette and its individual wells and used a white dinner plate instead. I made dabs of strong pigment and let them mix mud-pie style on my plate. It was great! When I needed sienna-umber 50-50 mix I would pick it up from the middle between the dabs. When I wanted my mix to be more red I moved closer to the center of burnt sienna dab. When I wanted my color tinted I would pull some ultramarine in the center. Very convenient – all color and value gradations where right there on my dinner plate. It took 2 hours to paint her, but it would probably take much longer if I would mixed my colors in the wells each one separate from the other.
5” x 4” (13 x 10 cm) on Arches Cold Press, Cotman pan paints
Saint Nick?
St. Nick
Well, no. I am sure he is not, because he is an exercise from Charles Reid’s book Watercolor Solutions. But he definitely makes me think of St. Nicolas. Must be the beard. I am obsessed with white beards these days because a salt-and-pepper beard from a graphite portrait I am working on is eluding me.
What is astonishing about this sketch is the fact that I painted him in one hour. Including the drawing. Perhaps I do have a little predisposition for portrait after all – an amazing thought! Which is not a thing to say about my painting of water (not shown here because it turned out a disaster.) Or perhaps it is Charles Reid’s technique – 3 super-saturated colors, wet-on-dry, almost dry brush but not quite, no waiting and no smoothing of edges, stop before you think you are finished.
I used my new Escoda 1212 Tajmir Kolinsky brushes, a Hanukkah gift from my parents. Even though I am an adult of respectable age, my dear parents still give me Hanukkah gifts – how wonderful! Well, I painted with them for the first time, and I am here to say: Escoda Kolinsky are a pure bliss!
5” x 6” (13 x 16 cm) on Cotman Watercolor pad, Cotman pan colors.
Fun with stick figures
Stick figures having fun
I am working on two portraits at the moment, one in graphite and one in watercolor. Both are taking a very long time. Graphite one – because it is complex, and watercolor one – because I don’t know what I am doing. I got tired of all this serious work full of self importance and had some fun with stick figures. So there!
Graphite and Pigma Micron pen on sketch paper.
Red Hat
Red Hat
According to my theory of predictable beginner subjects my next painting was supposed to be a building of some kind. No rule exists without exceptions, and so I created an exception. It is a human subject, and wearing a red hat at that.
The idea was to have color study exercise, a fast and sloppy wet-in-wet. It was really dripping. All reds in my box are here, mixed into cools and warms. The sketch and preparing washes took about an hour. The painting – 20 minutes.