Starting with watercolours.

I figured that if I tried to improve with so many mediums at once I'd end up not improving with any of them, so I decided to focus on painting with watercolours. I bought more paper in different sizes, a lot of paint - far more than I need at the moment, I must admit - and a selection of tutorial books. So far, so good. I bought small pads of paper and small paint boxes in the hope that this would reduce how much time it'd take to set up, paint and then clean up, so I'd be able to do it more often. In theory.

I had some paper left over from when I made messes as a kid, so I'm using that up first. I figured I could do four paintings on the first two sheets, two on the third sheet and one larger one on the final sheet. So, here's the first sheet of four:

I'm not scanning them individually because I don't think they deserve it. I've fondly dubbed them "watercolour disasters". The numbers on the first three are page numbers from the books I got the references from - all three of them are DK encyclopaedias/handbooks. The fourth was painted without a reference (hence the scrawl next to it).

To paint them, I used the smallest paint set that I had - a Winsor & Newton Cotman one - and a little water bottle/tray that I got with a watercolour pencil set from WHSmith years and years ago. I took photos of them with a ruler so you can see how big they aren't. The water bottle is quite awkward to fill up but the tray is the perfect size for the paint set. I can get two little paintings out of it without needing to change the water. The photo of the paints was taken after all four paintings were done and I haven't used them for anything else. I'm not sure how well they've held up.

The first one taught me that watercolours like to do whatever they want, and it's not my place to interfere. It looked absolutely fine until I tried to overwork it. Lesson learned, sort of. From starting the drawing to finishing the painting it only took about fifteen minutes, so I didn't waste too much of my time.

For the second I used masking fluid for the first time to do the green around the flower. The paper didn't like the masking fluid very much and sort of fell apart in places. I expected that because the paper is quite old and I have no idea what I'm doing. While working, the green outline looked quite like the blue in number three - vibrant. When it dried it became kinda invisible. This one went wrong really quickly. It was taking a lot longer than I could be bothered to spend on it and when I realised it'd be another disaster anyway, I just rushed the rest so I could move on.

The third one is a disabled goldfish. I forgot to draw the little side fins and I did the blue first, so by the time I realised that I'd given the poor thing a handicap, it was too late to do anything about it. Like the bird, this was done in about fifteen minutes, including drawing. I used masking fluid for the blue again, but the fish still ended up with a blue smudge on it. Still, I like masking fluid. It adds a lot to the time spent working though. And it smells horrible.

The fourth one was done without reference. The field needs to be darker because it looks like it's on the same level as the hill, and I have no idea what happened to that roof. It had colour on it, and then when it dried there was this colour-free circle. I couldn't be bothered to fix it.

Onto the next sheet of disasters! I think for the next four I'll do a horse, another flower (just because that was SUCH a disaster), a butterfly and maybe something more human. My acrylics and oils (I finally got some oils, by the way) are going to have to wait until I get better with these :)

This was a scheduled post - I am busy with university. Back soon! :)