Art Challenge 2 - 1st-14th February - "Village"

DONE! One hour-ish early! YAY! Art challenge 2 complete!

It's been a while since I painted an aquarium scene and I LOVE painting them, so I did a little fish village thing. If it isn't village-y enough for you, just picture the tank sitting in the local doctor's surgery.

I made the mistake of using watercolour pencils because I wanted to try them out. It was a disaster, so this image has had some minor touch-ups in Photoshop. Watercolour pencils are not the most accurate things in the world, and the colour went on so thick that there wasn't much leeway for me to do anything much with it after that. I so wish I'd just used watercolour paints, but I've learned for next time. Watercolour pencils = not much detail, much larger space. Got it.

Don't get me wrong, the pencils were really nice to use (and there's 72 colours that I didn't have to mix, yaaaay!), but they clearly weren't suited for so much detail in such a tiny space. The paper is the 10"x7" block as per usual, so you can imagine how tiny the aquarium gravel is. Also, hand drawn and individually coloured aquarium gravel? NEVER AGAIN.

Next art challenge starts tomorrow, and the theme is "supernatural"! I have so many ideas in my head already that I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to go with. Should be interesting!

Art Dump plus one WIP

I was going to make separate posts for all of these, but then I decided that I couldn't really be bothered to.

First up is the sheet of flowers done with Copic markers. I put a preview of this on Instagram with just the lines drawn, so here's the "finished" version. The first one I couldn't really be bothered with. For its size, it was too detailed. The second one is probably my favourite: I like the colours and I like the way they blended together. The third one is too dark but I used the lightest colours so there's not much I can do about that. The fourth one needs Copic white and I don't have any, so that isn't quite finished, and the fifth one looked perfectly blended until it dried, otherwise that would've been my favourite instead. I could probably have played with it more but I didn't want to go back to it. These were completed ages ago - the date is written on the sheet.

Next is the watercolour sunset I previewed on Twitter. It was completed the day after the painting in the last post but I haven't had the chance to upload it before now. This is one of the most relaxing things I've ever painted - I loved every minute of it. I'm definitely going to do more skies!

Then there's a Copic multiliner brush pen scribble of Wish from one of the photos I took of him years ago. I couldn't be bothered to do his markings, especially with a brush pen (he's an Appaloosa) and I didn't want to ruin what I'd done as I was happy with it like this. It practically matches the photo and I couldn't erase anything because it was pen, so I was very happy to get the anatomy done. It's in an A5 sketchbook that I have solely for use with pen and ink and it's the third drawing in there.

The fourth drawing in the pen and ink sketchbook is this one of a (sort of) Rainbow Cobweb Delta Guppy. I bought a dip pen and drawing inks and this is my first try at using colours and doing a "proper" drawing with them. I got a bit carried away with it but the paper held up quite well and I'm pleased with how it turned out. I'd rather not know how many times I had to dip the pen.

Last but not least is a watercolour WIP with horses and stuff. I don't know if I'll ever get around to finishing it. It's been quite boring to do so far, if I'm being honest. I am extremely sick of seeing and mixing the colour green and the masking fluid tore the paper in several places so it looks a mess anyway. I don't know. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

I'm going to return to the other watercolour flower soon so I can get that other sheet posted, then I'm going to try a few watercolours of people. No green there!