Pastels and Watercolors (and a few other art media)

[CherylL]

I was bored on day in early March and got out the dollar store paint and paper I have on hand for the grands. Hard to watercolor with a cheap kid's brush. Since then I picked up some better paint (still cheap at $7), 100% cotton paper and a dozen brushes. And masking fluid. I find painting challenging and relaxing. I'm not good at sketching and have never painted before.

For the portraits I made the models in Adobe Firefly for inspiration. Traced a rough outline and filled in the rest with a light sketch. The flower/birds was from tut reels.

 

[snowbear]

Awesome, Sharon. I can’t pick a favorite,

I ordered a few different sketchpads . I’m going to compare papers. I also ordered a basic set of fluid acrylics for use in the airbrush.

 

[terri]

I was bored on day in early March and got out the dollar store paint and paper I have on hand for the grands. Hard to watercolor with a cheap kid's brush. Since then I picked up some better paint (still cheap at $7), 100% cotton paper and a dozen brushes. And masking fluid. I find painting challenging and relaxing. I'm not good at sketching and have never painted before.

For the portraits I made the models in Adobe Firefly for inspiration. Traced a rough outline and filled in the rest with a light sketch. The flower/birds was from tut reels.

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Great work, Cheryl! I never knew you sketched or painted. Very clever way to get your portrait outlines started! Love the retro feel of both your ladies.

Your flowers are wonderful and look like greeting cards. Good stuff!

More please.

 

[snowbear]

I was bored on day in early March and got out the dollar store paint and paper I have on hand for the grands. Hard to watercolor with a cheap kid's brush. Since then I picked up some better paint (still cheap at $7), 100% cotton paper and a dozen brushes. And masking fluid. I find painting challenging and relaxing. I'm not good at sketching and have never painted before.

For the portraits I made the models in Adobe Firefly for inspiration. Traced a rough outline and filled in the rest with a light sketch. The flower/birds was from tut reels.

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Beautiful work.

 

[CherylL]

Great work, Cheryl! I never knew you sketched or painted. Very clever way to get your portrait outlines started! Love the retro feel of both your ladies.

Your flowers are wonderful and look like greeting cards. Good stuff!

More please.

I don't sketch or paint until last month. My only experience is painting in layers in PS for my photo composites or photo retouching. The hardest part is learning the water to paint ratio. At first I just plunged in, but now I take my time sketching in the details. The paper is very forgiving to erasing which I erase a lot. A learning curve planning on doing which first light layer and what color will be on top.

One I finished yesterday:

 

[CherylL]

Beautiful work.

Thanks! You all inspired me on this thread.

 

[terri]

Thanks! You all inspired me on this thread.

I'm so happy to hear that! We're all learning from each other in here. Pile it on!

Beautiful profile portrait up there. You're doing great for a self described beginner!

 

[SquarePeg]

You've been busy! Putting that sketchbook to good use, I see.

I love every single one of these. Your first one has a terrific pop art vibe. They're all so colorful and fun.

Applause! Were they all done with the markers?

Thanks my friend. Yes all done with the markers. They’re fun but no blending possible so hard to do anything with a background or soft edges. The sunflower was inspired by a painting I saw in one of my art groups. Different flower but similar style and colors. I can’t wait to try it with paint instead of the markers.

I was bored on day in early March and got out the dollar store paint and paper I have on hand for the grands. Hard to watercolor with a cheap kid's brush. Since then I picked up some better paint (still cheap at $7), 100% cotton paper and a dozen brushes. And masking fluid. I find painting challenging and relaxing. I'm not good at sketching and have never painted before.

For the portraits I made the models in Adobe Firefly for inspiration. Traced a rough outline and filled in the rest with a light sketch. The flower/birds was from tut reels.

View attachment 285723View attachment 285725View attachment 285726

Fantastic! Very impressive skin tones - I struggle with that.

Awesome, Sharon. I can’t pick a favorite,

I ordered a few different sketchpads . I’m going to compare papers. I also ordered a basic set of fluid acrylics for use in the airbrush.

Thanks! Michael’s had fluid acrylics on clearance when I was there the other day. Did you get that set? I picked it up to play around with. Haven’t opened them yet.

 

[snowbear]

Back in Maine!

I stuck with the Golden since I have their Heavy Body tubes. Six pack: Benzi Yellow Medium, Naphthal Red Light, Ultramarine, Perm. Green Lught, Carbon Black and Titanium White. The AB medium will thin out the soft body paints so ai can use the Liquitex Basics I still have,

 

[CherylL]

antastic! Very impressive skin tones - I struggle with that.

The paint set has two beige. I use the lighter one as a wash and then add it on dry for shadows and contour. Sometimes I use the darker beige for the contouring. I may try to paint women with varying skin tones medium to dark. I had an AI model, but not ready to attempt.

 

[snowbear]

I like to start with nine or ten colors: warm and cool primaries, black, white, burnt sienna for a good brown, and yellow ochre if I picked something else as warm yellow. That gives me a good starting point for mixing. Sometimes I have trouble mixing greens consistently, especially an olive green, so I’ll buy a couple of them.

In one of my classes, I had to make chromatic black by mixing complimentary colors, or the three primaries.

 

[SquarePeg]

Hello my artsy fartsy friends! Not sure if I mentioned this previously, but I signed up for another art class at the Boston MFA. This one is called Imagine Landscapes. Different instructor, really really love him. He’s very enthusiastic and talented. Have had three classes so far and mostly learning about sketching, horizon, perspective, and different mediums and when each might be preferred, depending on the scene.

But for yesterday’s class we had a substitute. An amazing woman who has worked for Disney animation, she worked with the guy who does all the Star Wars background art, and has also worked on video games like Mortal Kombat.

She had us try, for watercolor, instead of wetting the paper with just water, we wet the paper with a combination of water and white gouache. What an interesting effect this gives when you put the color on top of the still wet white guauche. The water colors retain their vibrancy really well and the edges are not as blurred. I did a line and wash type of finish to make them look like illustrations. I really enjoyed this technique and she gave a lot of really good feedback. She mentioned that she has some videos on YouTube for their local public access channel in the town that she lives and I plan on watching them. If you search art with Alison for KCA public access TV you’ll find eight videos mostly about sketching the human form.

Here are two of the vignettes I created using the white gauche undercoat and some black sharpie.

 

[terri]

Hello my artsy fartsy friends! Not sure if I mentioned this previously, but I signed up for another art class at the Boston MFA. This one is called Imagine Landscapes. Different instructor, really really love him. He’s very enthusiastic and talented. Have had three classes so far and mostly learning about sketching, horizon, perspective, and different mediums and when each might be preferred, depending on the scene.

But for yesterday’s class we had a substitute. An amazing woman who has worked for Disney animation, she worked with the guy who does all the Star Wars background art, and has also worked on video games like Mortal Kombat.

She had us try, for watercolor, instead of wetting the paper with just water, we wet the paper with a combination of water and white gouache. What an interesting effect this gives when you put the color on top of the still wet white guauche. The water colors retain their vibrancy really well and the edges are not as blurred. I did a line and wash type of finish to make them look like illustrations. I really enjoyed this technique and she gave a lot of really good feedback. She mentioned that she has some videos on YouTube for their local public access channel in the town that she lives and I plan on watching them. If you search art with Alison for KCA public access TV you’ll find eight videos mostly about sketching the human form.

Here are two of the vignettes I created using the white gauche undercoat and some black sharpie.

View attachment 285809

Fascinating! I'm quite jealous of the apparent quality of these classes/instructors being close by. There are little art schools around here but mainly geared to keeping kids busy.

This looks like a cool technique! Love the soft edges while still clearly looking like a watercolor.

Enjoy!! Post more pics from class as time permits.

 

[snowbear]

Nice. Now I'm going to have to get a tube and try it. Lazy lobster may have some; they gave me all their Colo-aid paper, though I doubt I'll use it.


I got a care package from Blick, this week: seven sketch pads, a mixed-media pad, fluid acrylics, acrylic airbrush medium (think thinner) and some tech pens. I'll add on to the fluids once I see how these work together and with the tube paints.


The sketch pads are for paper testing. There are two 60 pound papers (the Fabriano 1264 and the brown Strathmore 400 series) and fice 50 pound papers (the two Cansons, the white Strathmore 200 series, the yellow Strathmore 300 series and the Faber-Castell). I want to do similar works in each one for comparisons. The Mixed media is for practice with the airbrush and markers.

 

[SquarePeg]

Nice. Now I'm going to have to get a tube and try it. Lazy lobster may have some; they gave me all their Colo-aid paper, though I doubt I'll use it.


I got a care package from Blick, this week: seven sketch pads, a mixed-media pad, fluid acrylics, acrylic airbrush medium (think thinner) and some tech pens. I'll add on to the fluids once I see how these work together and with the tube paints.

View attachment 285813
The sketch pads are for paper testing. There are two 60 pound papers (the Fabriano 1264 and the brown Strathmore 400 series) and fice 50 pound papers (the two Cansons, the white Strathmore 200 series, the yellow Strathmore 300 series and the Faber-Castell). I want to do similar works in each one for comparisons. The Mixed media is for practice with the airbrush and markers.

Nice haul!!! it doesn’t look like you got any, but just for future reference stay away from the Blick brand watercolor paper. We used it in class a couple of weeks ago and it was horrible.