The answer is simple: me!

I wanted to experiment wet on wet (adding bleach into a watercolour wash) and brushing first bleach and adding the watercolour wash after. This is what I did and here is the result:​

Somehow, I thought I was going to get a bigger difference between the areas touched with bleach and the rest of the page. Note to self: ventilate the area and preferably work outside (not possible right now, we are still getting negative Celsius around here). This stuff stinks ...

After looking at the results for a while pondering what to do next, I saw something that reminded me of poppies at the bottom of the page. When I turned the page 180 degrees, I saw the head of a cute puppy. Now, that was an interesting conundrum - what to do?! 

In the end, I voted for the poppies since they were the first ones I saw. Also, I thought this is a good opportunity to then cut the flowers digitally and use them to learn how to make designs in gimp.

Here are the poppies:

I enhanced the colours a bit and and then extracted few flowers and leaves to bring over in GIMP. 
This part turned out to be longer and harder than I thought - because I never used GIMP or anything similar. 

Removing the background turned out to be a long process, much longer than anticipated. As a result, I have less flowers and leaves than I originally thought. I used what I had to create a small flower arrangement and I played with different colour backgrounds. I also created a few repeating patterns - for the sake of the exercise.

I also extracted an abstract pattern from another sketch, but that one turned out impossible to convert - at least for me. The nature of the lines and pattern was such that it made removing the white a task that I was not going to undertake any time soon. 

I did however convert another sketch of a peony done with a Chinese brush. This type of brush work is not great for converting in digital format. My opinion only, of course.

Lessons learned:

• allow a significant amount of time for the work, at least for a while as I am learning the program. I hope the process will get faster as I practice.
• working digitally is different. Must consider this ahead of time, as it will influence how I approach the sketching or painting process.
• the process depends also on what I want to do with the piece digitally. Will I need a transparent background or not? At the moment, I am tempted to say I will only use white backgrounds. Or most of the time ...
• having different colours for the background is fun!
• patterns are fun too, but I have to figure out what makes a good pattern
• having a good system for storing digital files becomes super important
• ditto for tags - I don't use them but I will have to otherwise I will never find anything
• even with the few elements I have, the possibilities of combining them are quite impressive
• cleaning up the background is easier with a higher zoom and a clean line to begin with. The more irregular the original, the harder it is to clean (the peony).

This is it for now. See  you soon!

At least we hope that this time, the sun is here to stay!

I joined skillshare because I wanted to learn more about gouache painting and I found tons of inspiration for other things. I suspect I will hang around for a while. 

Most tutorials are either short or divided in bit-size chapters. This works out great because I can fit them whenever I have a pocket of time. I found out tutorials on topics like pinterest marketing, opening and operating an etsy shop, self-publishing, blogging, writing and many more. Exciting stuff...I saved about 40 tutorials in my queue! I will have to start prioritizing the topics - or else I will fall down the rabbit hole of the net consumption!

One of the tutorials is about painting spring flowers, taught by Irina Trzaskos. It seemed appropriate, given that there was no sign of spring outside. I figured at least I can have spring in my sketchbook. My plan was to spend maybe 30 min or so going through the exercises - painting hyacinths, daffodils and tulips.

I was also doing my weekly challenge - 3 min sketches using the glass pen. So I started this way - sketched the outline of the hyacinth with glass pen and ink. I applied color first, planning to do a wet in wet flower. The scrap of watercolor paper I used was not of good quality, so my color mixing came out too flat. Note to self: use good paper....

But then I started wondering what would happen if....and I was down the experimenting path. For the next flower, I still used the glass pen and then applied the color. The third flower was done using the fude pen. From the first batch of experiments, the third one is my favorite. I find that the pen and color balance well, the pen created a bit of structure for the flower. The leaves however proved to be a challenge in all three of them. I ended up covering the leaves and bulb with collage paper and made vases for my flowers.

I decided to work in my good sketchbook with good paper. I looked up other reference images on the net. Did you know there are types of hyacinths that have less buds on the stem? The individual flowers are more defined because there is more space around them. Another note to self: one such flower could be used to explore negative space either in order to draw the flower or as an experiment with shapes that could be used in abstract painting. One of the benefits of exploring a subject like this is finding out new things about it. It would have been better to have a real flower, but the net offers a wide range of images from different angles.

I chose flowers that were in some kind of container and painted next one with less buds. Next image that caught my attention was of a bent flower. I thought it made for an interesting composition - different from the standard one. I am pleased with how this turned out, except for the leaves.

By this time I was a bit tired of hyacinths and I painted a daffodil. For the tulips, I wanted to try negative painting. I ended up covering all the whites. I think that the problem was the initial wash did not have enough variety and the colors were too pale. If this wash is good, then I don't need many more glazes to cut out the flowers. Sometimes I get carried away adding colors and I end up losing the transparency of the watercolor, which is what happened here. 

But then I saw an image with birds and I had an aha moment - how about adding a little bird? As if it was the bird that made the flower bend. I like the idea - cute, don't you think? I also painted some tulips on hot pressed paper. Not loving this paper. Good for pen and ink with some color, but not for mixing colors on paper. Can't even see the granularity of the paint.

And finally, I sketched again the flower and the bird on a separate paper. One last experiment - using the bamboo pen. I am pleased with the result, however more notes to self: 

• use the fude pen for the outline
• careful with the colors; on this last one I don't have enough white. I was again going for the wet on wet negative painting approach and lost some of the white
• revisit the bird in terms of color. It has to be a pretty bird, but also compliment the flower. Do I use complementary colors and have a sort of dialog going on between the 2 characters of the image? Or I make the bird more neutral and pop the color of the flower? What do you think? 

So here it is - a project that took a life of its own with a few lessons learned on the way. 

Happy Easter! Happy sketching!

A great spring day was at the rendez-vous for the monthly USK Montreal meeting. We met at the parc Lahaie at the corner of St, Laurent and Laurier.

I wanted to test the setup in preparation for Chicago. I am looking for ways to lighten the working surface so that I can work standing or sitting. Today I worked sitting and it was fine. I cut a piece of corrugated plastic - the kind used for elections stuff - 14 x 14. I have a smaller one, but I think I want to work on 8 x 10 or 9x 12 paper, so this bigger size is better. 

I used clip-on water containers - I think they are meant for oil painters to hold linseed oil and such. I put the paint in an empty cough-pills container and attached it to the board with magnets, The container weighs next to nothing and has space for 12 colours. If I want more colours, I can easily add another container. So far, so good. 

I chose to sketch the church instead of the firehouse. I also wanted to test the paper - it failed. I won't take this paper at the symposium. It is not white and it has to much texture for the pen to glide smoothly. I think this will be an issue because I had problems with my pens on other types of paper too. I made three attempts to sketch the church, trying to get the whole building on the paper. I still have issues simplifying the subject effectively because my building is missing various parts.

The setup is in the first picture - it works well with the paper landscape or portrait. 

And my fellow sketcher Ludmila sketched me sketching the church - how cool is this? And I look 20 years younger!

I played catch-up over the Christmas break - my sketching habit took a hit lately. I decided to sketch some of my presents and some leftovers.

The year is drawing to a close - let's hope that the next one will be better!

One of the classes I am taking over at Art Tutor is about watercolor pencils. I bought a while back 10 Inktense pencils and I seldom use them. I also have watercolor crayons - and I use them even more seldom that the pencils. 

I also think that they might be a better choice for sketching out - at least for now. They are easy to carry around and I can use the water brush. When I will get better and faster with watercolors, I will take them out again.

Inspiration - a photo taken in Girona. I am pleased with the result. Different from pure watercolor washes of course, but not bad. What do you think?

I picked up few art classes over at ArtTutor - they were on sale this past weekend. One of them is "Watercolor wet in wet" with Andrew Geeson. Watching the videos, I realized the mistake I was making. Well, one of them anyway. I used to wet the whole page, which made it very hard to control the paint. I decided to practice the approach and test it with pen line. 

​Here is the result:

For the apple, I used some lines with the Platinum Carbon Pen and for the gourd, the glass dip pen. I like the gourd the least. I see potential with this method, but more practice is needed of course, 

The corollary of my last exploration is that now I am using ultramarin blue anywhere and everywhere. I suppose one  could say this is the "blue period". Maybe after I am dead, somebody will stumble upon these records lost in the electronic world and think that indeed a blue period begun. Wouldn't that be fun!

More terre-a-terre, I used a photo from my vacation to sketch the same scene multiple times. Three times to be exact. One using two opposite colors, then directly to brush using Mona's UB and finally continuous pen line. 

I used the paint that dried up on the porcelain plate used for mixing. I am curious to see if the mixed paint looks any different. While I like the color, I think that the paint is not transparent enough. I need to do more research before the next attempt to make paint. But that won't be any time soon ...

That's right - making one's own paint from dry pigments like in the good old times. Kama Pigments  sells dry pigments and all the ingredients to make any kind of paint. Of course I had to try! My ultramarin is running low so I bought a jar of dry pigment and went to work. 

I also bought an empty tube to store the mixed paint in, but the store was out of watercolor tubes. I bought the smallest oil tube instead. 

As I was started to mix the paint, I had an epiphany. I was going to mix all the dry pigment. make a ton of paint and fill in the oil paint tube! Folks, trust me! This is the wrong epiphany to have! 

If you try this at home please, please, please - do a small amount at a time!

I ended up with  a huge mess, most likely the paint does not have enough binder. I could not mash the pigment properly. I wasted a lot of color. On the other hand, the process done properly does not seem all that complicated and it can represent a significant saving for somebody who uses a lot of paint, A jar of dry pigment was less than 6$ for 4oz. A tube of Daniel Smith is around 12$.

I suspect I will try this again until I figure out how to do it properly. But for now I have to figure out how to use the excessive amount of paint I made.  

I'd love to hear from you. Did you ever try to make your own paint? What happened?