Day: June 5, 2018

Other work from late December 2017

I doodled a few Moebius’ figures to test how badly black ink bleeds against alcoholic ink. Maybe I didn’t let it dry enough, but the Uni-ball pin pens supposedly don’t bleed but they did:
Two sketches of caped characters, one standing from behind, another in the water pushing a skiff
Sketch of a levitating character with spread out arms, dressed in a long billowy dark blue robe, a headdress that looks like antlers, and two large orbs at the ears.
A bit frustrated, I continued with a Moebius’ figure of a queen in heaven, part of an illustration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but this time I used a Pentel Brushpen and watercolor:
Black ink and coloured alcohol markers drawing of a madonna on clouds with joined hands, wearing a crown and a halo full of stars
This one I liked doing very much! I used a Black ink Pentel Brushpen for the black background and a white Posca pen for the zebra:
Zebra painted in white over a black rectangle

Vieux Nice (opus 1)

I spent a dozen hours or so, spread over three days, on a painting I did for a friend who loves city scenes that capture the ‘local taste’, the rhythms of balconies, and the way buildings in some Riviera towns cascade into each other.

I chose a view of the Old Nice, near the Cours Saleya, that featured colourful façades, a bell tower, tree tops and the iconic blue window blinds.

2B pencil sketch:
Pencil sketch on a large square watercolour sheet on a table in front of my iphone showing the reference photo

Then I did the outline using a 0.05 mm black Uni-ball Pin pen, and delimited the space with masking tape (glittery black was all I had –classy!):
Thin outline in black ink and tape at the top and bottom

Painting with shades of yellow, ochre, blue:
Watercolour nearly finished with the facades painted yellow and ochre, the window blinds painted blue, the bell tower painted with rainbow colours

Once the red and green are in, this is done. Here is the resulting 30×20 cm watercolor:
Finished watercolour, tape removed, signature and date added in white at the bottom right

Framed and ready to ship! (30×40 cm)
Finished watercolour framed in white wood

Practicing watercolor

All of these were done in a Moleskin watercolor book (21×13 cm), and are safely away from view.

 

I chose a YouTube video featuring a lovely Tuscany landscape and advertising it was very simple and ideal for beginners. The result isn’t entirely bad but it’s far from being good:
Collage of two pictures: at the top the still photo of the video I watched advertising a very simple Tuscany landscape for watercolour beginners. At the bottom my interpretation with stains and overlapping colours.

Following as best as I could the instructions in a “watercolor for beginners” manual, here is a winter field landscape, because I wanted to practice painting trees in particular and was intrigued by the splattering technique for the bluish snow (that you get by tapping your brush against your other hand close to where you want the projections to land):
winter field landscape with a few trees and bluish snow

From the same “watercolor for beginners” manual, I tried my hand on a woman doing laundry in the shade, interested by the technique of using a white pastel stick to draw the clothes lines. The only part I like is the foliage however.
loose painting of a woman doing laundry in the shade

Here are a goldfish that looks part grumpy, part menacing, and a couple of delicate magnolia flowers:

And finally a lemon on a branch with leaves and their shadows:

Goldfish triptych

The exercise consisted in using masking fluid to paint the blue backgrounds and save the white for the goldfish:
Three postcard sized watercolour sheets where I drew the shapes of goldfish and painted the background in light blue. The watercolour pans, brush and water glass are visible.

The masking fluid was painstakingly slow to peel off, left some residue and I ended up scraping paper a bit in places:

Scrapped paper and residue of the green masking fluid that would not be removed

I filled the first goldfish with black ink from a Pentel Brushpen (which is awesome for very thin lines as well as large areas) after painting the fins, tail, eyes and mouth in bright orange watercolor:

The second and third goldfish were a mix of bright orange watercolor, black on some fins, eye and mouth, and to cover the masking fluid residue I applied a layer of white watercolor paint:

I framed those and painted the frame bright orange as well before adding a layer of varnish: