Watercolor Demo

I wanted to make a blue painting so I figured why not record it as a live demo as well?

YouTube link.


8x10" on an Arches HP watercolor board. About 1.5 hours.

Painting 1

Oh boy, I always said it was a-comin': the day when I made the first "Painting" post. Yay!

As I may have mentioned before, I don't paint a whole lot but enjoy mixing mediums. This originally was intended as a quick and to-the-point monotone watercolor painting in sepia; however, I completed the painting and figured I'd add in a few details.

So I whipped out the pastel and charcoal pencils and went to town on the painting. I always liked to use charcoal over ink for the textural effects, and it worked similarly here. There's actually quite a variety of colors here: about 9, I believe. I left them kind of subtle to keep with the original plan but I think they definitely add something.

The painting is on Crescent 310 illustration board. It's an okay surface for this sort of thing: not as absorbent as good watercolor paper (the water WILL run) but tough and it holds its shape well even under my "soak it" approach. Crescent recommends it for pencils and not wet media but it is a multi-purpose board, so there you have it.

*UPDATE*

Added in a background with some sort of brown paint that was on my palette mixed into a bunch of Cadmium Red.

Sexy.

Drawings 2 (Demo)

More drawings!



These two were part of a demo I did:



There is the preliminary pencil drawing and the final color drawing.
Differences are visible between the two, I cannot recall which are corrections and which are just minor accidents. Generally, the color version is more technically correct.

As for the actual technique, I use conte crayons, pastel pencils, and soft pastels.
A simple conte sketching set has rapidly one of the most used tools in my arsenal. I begin with bistre for the darkest areas, blend it in with a cotton swab, and layer on the sanguine crayons and blend to shape the general form of the skin. I use three or four soft pastels to add in a little extra color to the skin afterwards.
Pastel pencils are used for the mouth, eyes, and details.

It's a very straightforward technique and I think it produces pretty good results.




This is another portrait produced using the same technique:





I don't really know either of these ladies very well but they were nice enough to allow me to use their photo for a reference and seemed very pleased with the results.





I have come to realize that I'm fairly good at what I do... it kind of surprises me just how happy a simple drawing can make someone.
The longer I do this, the more confident I become in my skills.



Hopefully I'll be doing this for a long time.

Drawings 1

There will be many of these posts... I'll keep them numbered as "Drawings 1, 2, 3, etc." so they're easy to find. As I gain more experience, you'll also see paintings and the like.

I found a paper I particularly like. It's Strathmore 400 drawing paper: not specifically archival, but good paper and I figure it'll last a long time anyway. It's so cheap, I can't really find anything else that really compares for the price. I use a better paper for more in depth works, but this one works great for general purpose drawing.



You'll either recognize this woman or you won't. This graphite drawing took about 3 hours and is one that a lot of my friends really like for some reason. I've done better ones, but they still like this one. The lady herself is very aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion.

One of the things I'm liking about blogger is that I can post higher resolution images. Art is best viewed large, preferably from life but this will work fine.







Here's one I did of a friend. He's a good guy and easy to draw because he his head is so ellipsoidal... heh.
This is an ink and brush drawing. This is actually probably my favorite technique I've ever tried. It allows me to work very fast and still maintain a high level of detail. I use a #4 white nylon brush and india ink thinned with water for this technique. My personal preference is Higgins Black Magic. It goes a long way: this is actually probably cheaper than drawing with a pencil because so little ink is needed.

Many of my methods are based on cutting costs and spending less while maintaining a consistent quality of workmanship and materials. I feel you shouldn't have to break the bank to create art.