Playing conkers, the arty way

Saturday morning I woke up to a new point and shoot camera. Tye picked one up from Tesco's on his way back from work. I love it when it buys me flowers, but a digital camera is much-MUCH nicer!

So that afternoon we went to Hylands House Park, taking lots of pictures as we went for a nice walk, to get to know this new camera, and of course so I'll have some reference pictures to draw and paint from during the winter or these grey and horrible days like we've been having.

I also stuck some plastic baggies in my bag, so I could bring back leafs and feathers and other things I found. I came home with three of them filled with things to draw from.

Even though I like to work in pen/ink and watercolours, I'm not confident enough yet to start off that way, so before I grab my pen I'll do a quick sketch in pencil, just to see where I am and really look at the object:




And then I did my pen drawing, using a Micron pen this time, and added my Koh-i-Noor watercolours. I did two paintings: one on sketchbook pad so I could take it out, and one in my Moleskine large sketchbook that I reserve for pen and watercolour work. For some reason, the loose leaf page got a Dutch text, and the one in the book an English one... I hadn't even noticed until I saw the two next to each other.





I think drawing and painting them is a much nicer way to play than using these chestnuts for a game of conkers, that truth be told I had not even heard of before moving to the UK. Strange people, these Brits...... ;)

Cheap is not always cheerful

So the other day I purchased an A6 notebook (that's 5.8 x 4.1 inches for those who don't know), and filled it with patterns. You've already seen it, although in the previous post I did not mention the notebook.

Here are some more patterns I made in it:

which effectively makes the notebook my self-made colouring book. ;)

I also bought some more cheap watercolours, as I could see myself going through my Koh-i-Noor set quite quickly when adding colour to these patterns. There's 80 of them in my book!
So here's cheap set by Farrel & Gold, bought at The Works for £2.50.


I had tested them out and was rather happy with them. The colours were nice and bold, and they took to watercolour paper quite nicely.


But when I used them in my little colouringbook, something awful happened. The paints turned very creamy and thick, and it looked more like a child had been splashing on some watery acrylics that did not have a nice glossy finish after they dried:


Trying to outline the patterns in the hopes of saving it did nothing but crumble the paint:


At first I thought that maybe it was the water brush I had used, but then I tried the same paints again on watercolour paper, and they are fine:
They're not turning to thick blobs and you can actually outline them again with pen.

Maybe some (cheap) paints just don't take to notebook paper.. Looks like I'll be using my Koh-i-Noors for the pattern-colouring-book anyway....

What a difference a black outline makes

When adding watercolour paint to my patterns (they're not doodles, I always think of doodles as something you scribble on a piece of paper while talking on the phone, or in class while pretending to listen to a teacher, not something you do on purpose), my outlines fade a little bit.


It's amazing how retracing those outlines with a black pen will make the colours pop:

Colour!

One of the lessons in Alisa Burke's Watercolor Bliss is to look at pattern and colour.

So I've been doing this, for days:








I forgot how much fun colouring in is! There's a meditative quality to just doodling and then looking for a nice colour combination to fill in those doodles with lots of great colour. ....