A 365 day art project… one drawing a day
Flowers are nice to sketch… mistakes are easily hidden, and no pencil necessary. Still thinking about painting these.. yes? No? I’m afraid to. I could try out my masking fluid on the daisy petals and stems…Yes. Agreed?
Just an ink sketch of dandelions. But they are one of my favorite things. And Slightly was being a real attention hound. 🙂 Which means I took like 20 pics of one sketch because I thought he was full of cuteness.
Actual drawing, no cat:
(but there is a little cat hair on the left side, I noticed later.)
Another day I think I’ll color it in.
Grabbed an idea from a safari search, and added doodles. Don’t even ask. I don’t know. But it’s my art for today. He has a rather Audrey Hepburnesque neck. Actually… now that I look at him… It may be HER! I like him better now.
So I thought this was my strength, kinda, as far as painting goes, but so far this is the submission I have enjoyed the least. My daughter asked me to try my hand at this poster, and make my own version. I like the way the painting looks here, but in person I kind of want to burn it. And I definitely like more mountain/less sky like the original.
What I learned:
(edited: Season six got better as I got further in)
NOT “slightly a favorite”, you read it correctly. My cat’s name is Slightly, and he loves this chair. It doesn’t seem particularly inviting for a cat, to me, but maybe it’s because he wants to sit with me in my ‘studio’ the hours I spend in there, just being my cat… or more likely it’s because I don’t allow the 95 pound puppy in that room. The one that really believes Slightly loves being in his mouth. I’m babysitting today, so just a quick sketch, Slightly’s chair. Sans Slights himself. Who is perfectly safe, and not inside a mouth at all.
Comparing my prima watercolors to the winsor & newton, I decided to try a few youtube “easy flower” tutorials, and a few of my own doodles. I love both sets of watercolors, but the prima are brighter and bolder, and easier to pick up color. Flowers will take more practice. 🙂
So I thought today I’d start coming up with ideas for a watercolor coloring book, a real need in the crafters/amateur artists market as far as I can tell. I can only find one, put out by prima, that’s on real watercolor paper. It has a few nice designs, but is mostly short quotes, a few words with a little graphic and lots of space. I am thinking of some designs that might be more fun to paint.
Still, I started simple, with… yeah, a sketch with just words, (by the way LOOK AT THAT! I finally designed a font of my own instead of copying someone’s!) and then thought I’d go ahead and color it in, too, with the paints that arrived yesterday…Prima Watercolor Confections.(the Tropical set) I LOVE them. They are SO bold and beautiful. I’ve never used really high end watercolor paints, so don’t have much to compare with right now, but these are very fun for an average person to play with. (Prima, I love them so much, I should be your spokesperson!!! Just ask!)
I hope to figure out a way to design and publish a watercolor coloring book over the course of the year, so stay tuned with that. If you have suggestions or experience with a project like this PLEASE leave advice. My daughter suggested I need a drawing tablet for this project, so last night I unsuccessfully tried to load the wacom tablet my nephew had left here for me to play with a few years ago. It seems so much simpler to DRAW, on PAPER. Technology frightens me. So many options. But I’m figuring out the blog thing so I can figure out the tablet thing, too.
Did I mention how much fun these paints are?????
More brush pen practice.
I actually thought I’d do a quick nothing doodle today because I was going out… but I ended up trying a new brush pen and spent more time than I’d imagined. I like it more than the kuretake marker I’ve tried the past couple of days. It’s a thin plastic tube full of ink, with a brush tip… like if a soft bodied fountain pen and a paint brush had a baby. It’s probably for Japanese writing, actually. (the blue pen in the photo) Found out the hard way the ink stays wet a LONG time and still smears even after it is dry if you erase around it. So… I worked the smears into the design and liked the end result MORE than without the smears! Tried three other new pens as well, micron and comic… Fun doodles! More time than I meant to invest, and certainly doesn’t look like it. But day 13 is finished.
New prima paints! Online artists seem biased against these paints because they are inexpensive (KIND OF… not to me) and are less translucent, and don’t have pigment info included, but I’m more of a crafter, and I really had fun with them. I tend to like acrylic painting better than watercolor, so maybe more opaque watercolors appeal to me. Today I worked on a practice piece… a mini version of something my daughter asked for. Easier than anticipated. But I left off a few necessary details, and did make some mistakes. A good learning project.
ThreeSixFiveArt 