Adventures In Watercolor 7

These may be the last watercolors I’m going to post in a while. I really should start painting again – I can feel myself getting rusty – but these past few weeks have been so insanely busy that I didn’t have the time or feel the inclination to take my brushes and colors out.

Anyway, here are some landscapes I did a while ago. I’m still struggling with shadows and reflections, as you can see. (These are all copies of existing paintings).

Back in October-November, I had enough free time to take another watercolor class, with a focus on landscapes, and the results certainly look better than the ones I did on my own:

I guess I’ll just have to keep practicing, or take another class if I can!

Adventures In Watercolor 6

It’s been a while since I posted my watercolor paintings, and the truth is that it’s been a while since I painted too – it’s the end of the semester, so I’ve been too busy with work. Luckily, I still have some paintings that I haven’t posted, so here goes.

These paintings are a little special – the story is, before I moved home from LA, I bought a pad of watercolor paper from Michael’s with the intention of practicing on it. Flash forward 6 years, the pad has been forgotten in the back of my desk drawer until I started taking watercolor classes and finally remembered it. However, by this time, it has gone moldy and absorbed water too quickly, so the paint can’t spread like it should. Being the cheapskate that I am, I refused to give them up, so I looked up ways to salvage them. I didn’t find any straight answers, but I did find some instructions for making your own watercolor paper, in which you can use gelatin to “size” the paper (i.e. coat it to make it less absorbent). I decided to give it a try.

The result was… OK. I didn’t get my paper back to how it was, but at least I can paint with it now. It doesn’t take well to wet-on-wet, so I mostly use it for still life and food painting. It allows me to understand watercolor a bit more (I never knew about sizing paper before) and gives me a chance to practice different techniques, which is fun.

These are supposed to be eggs but I got impatient with shading each individual one…

Adventures In Watercolor 5

Here are some more paintings I’ve finished over the past few weeks. Most of them are copied from existing paintings, and a few are from photos.

These first two are from photos, while the ones below them are copies of existing paintings

I find it easier to copy a painting than to work from a photo, because with a painting, I can see the techniques used, while with a photo, I still have troubles figuring out how to achieve a certain look. And that’s why I’m taking another class, starting later this month. Hopefully it can help me to improve.

Adventures In Watercolor 4

As promised, here is my final piece from my watercolor class:

For our finals, we had to pick a photo (NOT a painting!) and reproduce it on 18 x 24 paper. Mine was based on this photo of the Dark Hedges in Northern Ireland. As you may have noticed from my previous paintings, trees are kinda my specialty, so this seemed like a good choice. I’m pretty satisfied with the end result; I only wish it could look more transparent, more like a watercolor painting – here, I added so many layers that it looks more like a gouache/acrylic piece. I guess I just need to practice more…

And here are some more paintings that I’ve been working on since the class ended:

There is still a lot I need to learn though, so once my schedule slows down a bit, I’m going to see if there is another class I can take.

Adventures In Watercolor 3

So here is the next batch of my watercolors. After tackling flowers and still life, we were on to landscapes, which I prefer, because it doesn’t require drawing precise shapes. We started with monochromatic landscapes first:

Then we moved on to full color:

Stay tuned, because it’s our “graduation ceremony” this weekend and I’ll get to pick up my final piece to show you guys. And I’ve been painting regularly (now that school has started again, I try to complete one painting per week) so there will be more to come!