Discovering Watercolors: A W.I.P.

I have had an attack of procrastination...or maybe I have encountered what other artists have experienced: putting a project off until I begin to "feel it". I cannot explain it but there are times that I'm not "feeling it". I avoid drawing/painting at these times because it only seems to produce frustration. But as soon as I do "feel it" I pick up my pencil or brush and get to it, feeling more receptive to the mistakes I make. At any rate, I am successfully learning more about watercolors. Creating color-schemes with colored pencils before working with watercolors is working great for me. I have also discovered that instead of merely waiting to "feel it" for a certain project, that it would be advantageous to start another project...and then another...etc. This way I am not wasting time that could be spent stretching my creativity to new levels.

What have I been up to?

I am teaching myself to paint with watercolors. I went to my local book store and bought a book that comes with a DVD written by Birgit O'Connor. Above is an excercise that has helped me understand how watercolor moves. The book exposes essential watercolor laws to non-painters like myself but are obvious to others. Here are a couple of laws:

(1) [Watercolor] can't move without water.

(2) Backwashes happen when the moisture level is uneven.

(3) Watercolor can be lifted to varying degrees.

This is my unfinished preliminary color scheme in colored pencil.

Indie Author

Did you know that Eragon's author was just 15 years old when he wrote the book? And that it was originally SELF-PUBLISHED in 2002? And that he created the original cover art (not shown) and those books are being sold for over $2,000 USD? Paolini is only now 27 years old and is currently working on the fourth novel in the series. Absolutely AMAZING!!! ***It will be awhile before I post my preliminary "painting" so I will try my best to keep you entertained in the meanwhile :-)

John A. Kurtz's sketchbook

These sketchbook pages are those of John A. Kurtz

I am a doodler who does not know much about painting. So I am extremely intimidated with the thought of painting my 584 mm by 200 mm (plus 5 mm bleed) line drawing. I found out about John A. Kurtz paintings from Thaneeya McArdle's web site. She interviewed him and I learned that he sorts out his color schemes with colored pencils before moving on to creating large acrylic paintings. If that technique works for accomplished artists like Kurtz, I will implement it into my routine. So, it may be a few weeks before I will have completed the painting but as soon as it is complete I will share it with you.

A Serious Re-vision

Double WHEW! I strrrretched my illustration by adding another tree and a square child to swing from it. Now I am off to paint a sketch I created for the Watercolor Wednesdays prompt.

Blogging Using Windows

...For the last hour and a half, I have been trying to figure out how to use Windows to create blogs...I have been unsuccessful. But alas, the weekend is here and I have plans to spend an uninterrupted 4-hour sketching / drawing session in hopes of completing that LAC assignment. Stay tuned...

Revised Sketch

Whew! After many critiques this is what the final draft of my sketch looks like.

Update: This is supposed to be a DOUBLE-PAGED spread. I am so glad that I am making and learning from my mistakes now. Come back next weekend to see what I come up with.