Thursday 11 June 2015

Fun with ACEOs (1-5).

I bought a hefty amount of ACEOs a little while ago for me to play with. I wanted to have a go at little paintings again - I guess I've missed working on small and quick things after all. I also thought that they'd be great for testing new art materials and practising techniques or new subjects (or old subjects that I'm still crap at). If it goes wrong, I haven't wasted much as the cards are really cheap to buy. Basically, they're for me to play around with. Some will be "finished", some won't. Most are probably just going to be the result of "I want to play with something art-related but I'm not sure what".

1.
05/05/2015


Cotman watercolours. Intentionally unnatural colours (that don't come across at all in the photo - that grass is NOT that shade of green). I couldn't be bothered with mixing, I just wanted to play with my new cards. 

2.
22/05/2015


Cotman watercolours and Copic Multiliner in Sepia. No sketch lines, no idea what I was doing, done freehand while the next one was taking ages to dry. Turned out to be my favourite so far. 

3.
26/05/2015


Cotman watercolour. Playing with more muted tones for a landscape scribble but I didn't really like them. I think I prefer the brighter ones I'm used to. Landscapes remain one of my art nemeses. 

4. 
06/06/2015


Cotman watercolour. Wanted to play with drawing pansies but then decided to turn this into a waterbrush test. I've never painted with a waterbrush before. Conclusion: detail is impossible, water water everywhere. I had to work with water when I didn't want water, which meant it had to be done in lots of layers (something I don't like doing with watercolour anymore) and the paint ended up thick and flat. For work like this, the waterbrush isn't ideal. I imagine it's more suited to sketching, which is what people use them for, so I'll try it for that soon.

5.
10/06/2015


This turned out a lot better than the last eye I tried to paint (and wasted a much smaller piece of paper, too) but I still have so much I need to improve. Eyelashes and eyebrows are really hard to do with the brushes that I have - I may have to dig my sable rigger out when I try these in future.

The only one I signed with paint and a brush is the third one, the rest were done with a Copic Multiliner. I'm not good at signing my name in miniature: 2.5"x3.5" doesn't give you much to work with! They're all a bit warped, as you can see. I did tape them all down, but there's only so much tape you can put on a card that tiny and still have a surface left to paint on.

I'm going to blog these like I did (and should still be doing but shhh) the Instagram photos. Every five ACEOs will be a blog. I have around 200 cards: I'm hoping to see an improvement as I work through them.