Suddenly crashed into art again

Hi, My name is Lola Slade. I live in Toronto, Canada. I started this blog to try to capture some of the excitement I have about making artwork again. I started this blog about 5 weeks after getting started with painting again which was back in December 2020 during Christmas break. I grabbed a cheap watercolor set, a small set of cheap Walmart brushes plus a couple of the store brand white taklon brushes. I also picked up an an instruction book. (Already had the pad of watercolor paper from an impulse purchase a few years ago).

Forty dollars didn't seem too bad. I didn't know what I was getting into!

I am still trying to keep my art hobby on a budget but once the enthusiasm took over that is proved hard. I will be writing about materials as I go through the inevitable upgrade curve.

My restart was after a really long break from creating. More than 20 years ago I went to art school for a year. Once I started again I found I could still basically copy photographs in pencil. The rest I am going to have to learn or relearn.

Comments

Work from "101 Watercolor techniques" - Exercise 005

This exercise was a bit of a struggle for a beginner. Believe it or not the result below is the third attempt. The point of the exercise was to get a result of depth on the paper using only analogous colours and without using color gradation. I am sure I learned something from it. What I think I struggled with among other things was "water control" - keeping the water within the small leaf areas from running. Learning: As I went along I had a little bit more freedom with the strokes. I started to notice how the exercise author was using negative space and tried to replicate it. \

Initial impressions: Watercolor essentials, Hands on techniques for exploring watercolor in motion

I got this book from the library. I planned to purchase it at the time but wanted to make sure it would work for my level first. At the time of reading it I have been using watercolors for 6 weeks. It's definitely a good book but after going through it I am not sure it is the next step that I need. Pros There is a good section on the DVD on washes and problems with washes There are a few good basic exercises like the value and shadows exercises that I would like to work on The tip to use "contact paper" from the hardware store might save me a lot of money as I was seriously wondering whether masking film was something I needed to buy The special techniques tips are well explained and it's nice to have all the demos on the disc Cons A large amount of the book and the DVD are devoted to texturing techniques that I would consider special effects. I would have preferred to see more demonstrations (over and over again) of basic washes, charging and applying those to simpl...

Simple apple painting

Not sure if this is more successful than my first fruit painting but I certainly thought about it more. I tried to use lifting to get the white spots on the skin (which I think worked ok) and for the reflections around the edge (which didn't really work). I also tried adding white after for the waxy white part of the skin. I know it's not recommended I just wanted to see what it would look like.

Crashing water

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