Hospital Sketch

I took a friend of mine to hospital this morning for his monthly chemo appointment. While he was waiting in the chair in infusion, I drew him. This is done in mechanical pencil in my small Moleskine sketch book. The face doesn't look like him at all and I did not know how to draw his hands. He was wearing denim shorts so I colored them in blue with a watercolor pencil and waterbrush.

Porcelain Floral Palettes

There's a HUGE difference between using a porcelain floral palette to mix paints and a plastic one. The problem of disappearing paints is no longer there. It's easier to judge how much water to add and it seems you use less paint! I bought the two below at Dick Blick for about $4 each.

Using a large plastic palette to store paints is fine so long as you use a porcelain palette to mix them. As a beginner, I wish I had bought these two porcelain palettes months ago! They have made the learning process a lot easier.

Work in Progress

For some reason these are darker than they should be. The scanner perhaps! Oh well!

Here is a half done watercolor painting I am working on with the original picture underneath it. I did take out the cars to keep it simpler. It's been a week now but it's getting there. The detail is beginning to drive me nuts and I am not sure such a detailed painting was a good choice for a beginner; nevertheless, I will finish it . . . slowly. I have been using a rigger brush for the dark shadows around the windows and I am not sure that's the correct brush to use for this.

The building on the far left is not supposed to be in line with the others that are beside it. Instead, it turns a slight corner off the page.

I will finish this one but I want to work on some flowers as well so I took the photos below. I am not going to get bogged down doing the whole thing, just the flower itself - from either photo or both. What do you think?

I might do both eventually but how do you do those orange things in the middle of the pink daisies? (Can you tell I am not a botanist?)

Perspective

I recently completed this drawing of a photo in preparation for painting. I think the perspective is pretty good, but then I did copy the drawing, after all. I still have great difficulty determining where the horizon should be so I know the angle at which to draw the guidelines. (This drawing is grossly darkened so you can see it.)

Watercolor Class - Week Two

I am way behind but that's okay. I am trying to learn how to do water and trees. I couldn't find a good photo so I am trying to paint one I found on a copyright-free site. Above you will see both the photo and my attempt.

I haven't finished the painting yet as I am trying to figure out how to do the large tree - that might be a later lesson. Anyway, this is my attempt at water and doing trees with sponges. The rest of it is not done yet.

My greens are not that great as I was not sure what colors to mix to get the brownish-green. I also still have to do the other tree shadows in the water underneath the big tree.

Would love some feedback on this one.

Watercolor Class - Week One Homework - Banana

Well, here's my banana! The banana was sitting in front of the window in front of me so the top of it was lighter than the bottom. There was a definite ridge between the light top and the darker bottom but I couldn't portray it very well. I think I had that part too wet. I used Cad Yellow over the entire banana and then used a damp brush to erase some of it from the top to make it look lighter. To get the brown marks I used a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. I applied it with a bit of sea sponge. The stalky end has a little sap green in it.

Watercolor Rock

This is the last drawing I did of the rock. This was done in my Moleskine watercolor book. It was not as easy to draw on and, although the paper is better for watercolor than drawing paper, I did not do a good job of the watercolor at all.

Oh! The whitish area in the rock looked just like that. It had an inscription on it but I couldn't read it from where I was sitting.