Playing Dress Up

Here is my first painting for this year. I am personally not satisfied with the painting because of the error in judgement during the sketching stage. I read a tip somewhere online to use watercolor pencil for outline since the color would dissolve away during subsequent washes. For most part, the color did dissolve but the outline still remained. To make matter worse, I used sky blue watercolor pencil to outline the sketch. I had to use the “proxy” brushes for cleaning the dental braces to scrub away most of the stubborn lines. It helped to a certain extent. So I feel my result is so and so.

This sweet shy girl is my niece playing dress-up for a fancy dress competition at her school. The reference photo is courtesy of her parents. I hope they like it.

9 by 12 inches on 140# watercolor paper

DSFDF Year End Portrait Challenge

I finished painting the portrait of the mystery artist that Ms.Karin Jurick send to me as part of DSFDF year end challenge. I was pretty tensed about painting blond hair because of my lack of experience. However I was relieved to see that it came out okay.

Leslie, finally I used Arches watercolor paper here. The paper behaves so differently from Canson. I am yet to get used to and learn how Arches behaves with watercolors. I feel that it is a good surface for watercolor but I am yet to learn how to dodge the pigment around to get the desired flow.  

Okay back to the subject, I will put up the reference photo with the artist’s permission after I identify the artist in the portrait. So watch this space!

Update (12/28/2009) :
Here is the my reference photo and the artist is Julie Bloch. I believe this portrait is the last painting for the year 2009. I am already working on another painting which you can see next year. Until then, happy holidays!

less than 9 by 12 inches on 140# Arches watercolor paper

I am Back

I have been busy sewing for the past two weeks which explains for my absence in the blog world. What you see in the image above are some of my sewing creations. All of them have been given away as gifts. I am participating for the current DSFDF challenge hosted by the artist Karin Jurick. I will start working on the portrait of the mystery artist that Ms.Jurick has mailed me early December. I must start this ASAP or  I will  run  out of time if I slack.

Waterlily Series No.7

It took more than a month to finish this painting. Moreover, I did the last drawing while I took a break from this one. I owe my thanks to my DH for giving me the encouragement to finish off the painting. I skipped the underpainting part while doing the gouache resist. It was difficult to scrub away the white gouache. The watercolor paint was behaving very differently when I painted over the gouache layer. I managed to finish off the waterlily after overcoming the learning curve.

 Leslie, a talented artist,  has  just posted another wonderful gouache resist painting. You will easily fall in love with this technique once you learn how to do it

Waterlily Series No.7
12 by 16 inches on 140# watercolor paper

Improved Version

As per Veda’s and RKV’s suggestion, I made some improvements. What you see is before in the left and after in the right. I think it looks better now. What do you say?

BJ Again

I got a reference photo from BJ with her three-fourth profile. The profile was challenging since this was my first time with such an angle. I recently bought conté crayons sketching set from the local art store. So the colors used were limited to sanguine,sepia, charcoal, 2B graphite and white. I did lots and lots of scrubbing with a paper towel to blend the colors. Tortillons and cotton earbuds are good substitute for blending. The good thing was I could erase the colors with a kneaded erasor but only to a certain extent. So a stain always remained especially in area where the conté crayons were heavily applied.
I think conté crayons is a good transition for me after using graphite for so long. A good transition for me to use colors in portraiture. I want to try out this sketching set before I invest in colored crayon pencils. Now that the holiday season is approaching, there are lots of sales going on in internet art supply stores. There aren’t a lot of tutorials on how to use conté crayons in the blog world or internet. So I am learning on the go. It seems it is not a popular medium and you can see it is mostly used  in mixed media type of arts. Since it is mainly composed of graphite with kaolin clay as binder, there is a lot of hesistation among the artists to put conté crayon pencils under colored pencil category. You can also get conté crayons in stick ; the same as you see in pastel sticks. Since I hate the chalky feeling on my fingers, I opted out of sticks. Oh and another thing, the drawings are easily smudgable. But again, you can erase them off with a kneaded erasor.

BJ Again
9 by 12 inches on 111# Canson Drawing Paper

Update

My mil passed away two weeks back after battling with cancer for almost 15 years.  This has forced me to stay away from my regular painting routine. I thank regular visitors for checking this blog from time to time in hope to see a new post. I will resume my painting as soon as possible.

Alene

I have managed to finish a drawing before this month gets over. I can see that I have done only a couple of art projects this month. I guess those miniatures have burned me out. I miss painting in watercolor after this short gap. On a happy note, I have been able to overcome a lot of doubts on how to paint crystals after watching Joyce Faulknor’s DVD that I had borrowed from my local library. She makes it looks so easy and simple. Learning a technique from print is so different from watch-and-learn. I find myself trying things out mostly through watch-and-learn. I think it gives you a lot of confidence when you see others doing it.  Having said that now I can add a  crystals/glass project in my to-paint list.

Alene
9 by 12 inches on heavy-weight drawing paper with graphite and charcoal

Addentum (Nov.5) :

Here is the reference picture:

Alene’s parents took her picture at their standing height which resulted in a skewed image. I opted for a cropped portrait because I thought the full-figure drawing at this angle would be too jarring. The resolution was not so sharp so I had to make do with what I have on hand.

This drawing is gifted to Alene’s parents. Photo courtesy of Mrs.&Mr. Sebastian.

Fresh Catch of the Day

I tried a totally new technique to do this painting. It is Gouache with Ink Resist and then finally you finish off with watercolor. There is a wonderful article in WetCanvas giving a demo on how to do this. The only extra requisitions apart from your regular watercolor supplies are white gouache and waterproof black India ink. You can use this technique to play down the details in your composition and get that wonderful print-like effect.

I did this painting from my reference photo which I took while I was visiting my hometown in South India about five years back. Since I was living along the coastal area, there was no shortage for the availability of seafood. I am basically a seafood lover and these snappers are my personal favorite. They are especially good when you shallow fry in oil after marinating them in hot spices. We bought the fishes from the fishmonger who used to come to our doorstep every weekdays. As the fishes were sitting beside the kitchen sink for the prep, I had a light bulb moment to capture this moment digitally.  After “artistically” arranging the snappers, I snapped the picture with our hired help looking on with an amazed curiosity. When I started painting in watercolor, I wanted to paint a seafood and this photo was on the top of my list. But the chance to paint this materialized only now.

The paper size is 5 by 8 inches. So this is also in miniature format.

P.S :  Visit the artist Kay Robbins’  website to find more inspirational paintings using Gouache and Ink Resist technique.

Fresh Catch of the Day
5 by 8 inches on W&N Cotman 140lb cp watercolor paper

Canna Miniatures Set 2

Both the paintings are done on 4 by 6 inches 140# cp watercolor paper.
Reference source: Self