Growing Pains

This hurts to much to post....

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

It's awful.  You can think what you want about it, but I think it's terrible.  The proportions are bad, quality of the painting is poor, and When I see it all I see are my repeated attempts to 'fix' it.

The problem was that hands are hard.  And as it started to go down hill instead of looking at my hand, which was RIGHT THERE to use as reference, I just kept trying to go off my my head.   I don't know why I do that, but it seems to be a pattern, when things start going bad I turn inward for the solutions.  Sometimes that works out, but not in the case of hands.  I just don't have the anatomical knowledge to do that...  and so with a grimace on my face I show you the first thing in this book that I would consider a failure.  I promised myself that the next day I would try this again, and turn my failure into a success!  

Painting Water...

...and some ducks too I suppose.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

In all seriousness, the main reason I painted this was because I was interested in trying my hand at water.  It is incredibly complex.  I think I faked it reasonably well here, but it's certainly something I want to try more of. I think it becomes one of those skills that you eventually just do it without really looking at anything.  Painting much more off of personal knowledge than exacting details.  I'll eventually dig up more water photos and have another crack at it.

Again, I'm astonished how much latitude you have with watercolor when compared to digital.  The audience is just so much more forgiving of sloppy or low detailed areas than they would be if this was digitally painted.  I wonder if the inherent texture of the medium plays a roll in this.  

Inspiration

It is easy to see beauty in a flower, but it takes a quiet mind to see beauty in other things. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

A few weekends ago I was helping my brother clean out his garroge in preparation of moving.  It hadn't been cleanre dout in a decade and was full of rusted, moldy disgusting-ness.  Most of it went straight into a dumpster, but some things had to be set aside, like this little metal gas can.

I can't say what it was, but something about it really caught my attention, so I snapped a few quick pictures of it with my phone for later use ( I was there to help clean after all, not sit down and paint).  This is just further proof that you can fake/imply details in the background if you have a strong subject matter and good composition.  A fun little piece over all.  

Taking Risks (Even if They are Small)

Sometimes I get attached to a piece midway through and am terrified I'm going to ruin it any second...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

This was one of those cases...I has painted the flag stones and the lily pads and the flower and it looked pretty good, but the top seemed empty.  The photo I was working from wasn't particularly well composed so it just kind of ended there and I wasn't sure what to do.  I'm not sure why I did this, but I grabbed one of my Niji Water Brushes and I wet the entire top section and them proceeded to just drop in black, sienna and a blue and just let them sit there and mingle a little as they dried. Nine out of ten people who have seen this say that is their favorite part...  

The other thing that was challenging in this piece was I had initially painted the water between the surface pads black, which was a terrible idea and looked nothing like what I wanted for the picture.  But I had discovered back on the house form a few posts ago that one of my yellows is rather opaque, so I used it ti mix up a green and was able to get those dark green murky submerged shapes in the water, which I was thrilled with.  This is a technique I'm certainly going to use in future water scenes when depicting submerged objects. 

I cheated...

...the whiskers are done in colored pencil. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

So I reached into the magic shoe box and pulled out a picture of my parent's cat.  What's interesting about this picture is I've painted it before in oils, and I also did a colored pencil version of it years ago.  I unfortunatly have to say thisis my least favorite version of the picture.  I sort of feel like I botched the subtleties of his face.

Aside from that, fur is very challenging.  I obviously can't paint every single hair, but I think there is a lot of room for me to improve on implying groupings of hair.  It also wouldn't hurt me to get a better grasp of the underlying anatomy instead of just relying on knowledge of surface details. 

I may not feel it was terribly successful, but I feel I learned a lot of what not to do when painting small furry animals, and that's just as valuable as doing it right.  

Photo Reference

I decided to paint something other than food stuffs...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

It's based on a photo of a house I took years ago.  I have no idea where this house is, or who lives there.  I'm the kind of person who will insist on pulling over or doubling back so I can snap a picture of something I find aesthetically pleasing.  This has led to shoe boxes and hard drives full of lots of interesting subject matter for me to pick form when I lack inspiration.  

Overall I like this piece, but I did learn a general lesson.  Black is fine for first pass painting, and for final details if appropriate, but it's horrible for washes intended to go over something that's already there.  It really deadens the colors.  So I guess it's not useless, as you might need that at some point, but it wasn't what I felt I needed here.  Overall still successful.