WW #5: fixes and tests
Despite all the extremely important stuff I had going on this week, I had a time to at least touch my art materials! Of course I couldn’t manage to get anything earth shattering done (who expected that, seriously?) but at least something to update this blog with. Believe it or not.
Firstly, as a text-only update, I must brag about the old paintings I’ve been fixing. I am a little annoyed at how lazy I tend to be: it might be a valid option to do everything properly on the first go… Alright, to some extent this comes down to using my time wisely…
Secondly, finally a test piece that has been on the works for at least two months.
(reference image by KLM. @ kalmanen.deviantart.com)
Gessoed MDF, a thin layer of acrylics and topped with watercolours. For quite some time now I’ve been thinking whether watercolours stick on top of acrylic paints (for fixing stuff etc.). Yes it does, but I should’ve bothered with fixative for some parts. But really, as you can deduct from the quality of this work, I finished very quickly instead of really making this a proper piece.
I couldn’t have imagined how difficult it was to control the painting process. However, I’m guessing mostly this was due to two things: wrong kind of brush and too hard (= non-absorptive) painting surface. I would think this would work better with a thick paper.
On the plus side one could mark the superb effects, especially in background work. The colours ran and blended really nicely, though a bit unexpectedly. A bit more patience and with better planning this could produce pretty neat works! I also liked the textures on the horse, even though otherwise the horse was pretty ruined due to bad colour choices.
Next time the amount of white must be drastically limited. It’s really difficult to cover up mistakes and approximations in the acrylic blocking stage with watercolour. (See the pale area reserved for the mane and edges with the background blue…) I also need to investigate why the watercolour didn’t cover all the parts of the board nicely.
All in all, a nice experiment even if the result wasn’t all that hot.
The last picture for this week is an age-old graphite drawing which I really had the energy to finish up. Finally, finally. The scan might be lying a bit about the darkness of the background etc., but…
And that’s that.
- At the same time I should inform that there’s a slight problem with the Visual Expression updates because I have not taken pictures… Tulossa on ainakin grafiikasta kaksi kappaletta heti kun saan asiat järjestykseen. Maalauksen postauksissa olen hieman kahden vaiheilla, koska en vielä haluaisi esitellä päätöitä.
- Studio-postausta ei tule, koska en ole ollut studiolla. Tämä kommentti ehkä vaatii parikseen seuraavan hymiön: :’(
- Akvarellikurssipostaus tulee ensi viikolla, jos nyt voisi muistaa valokuvata työnsä. Geez.
