Practice
Notes
29/12/21
- 2 hrs of gesture study from Sketchdaily
Pencil: tried to base this off the gesture studies skills rather than going straight to boxes
Inks: The key here is to draw with the brush, not trace or try to copy the pencil lines underneath. That's how you get bold, expressive lines and avoid blotches and mistakes; and it needs confidence but I'm working on it.
Underpanting: I think i need to make pools of ink on my palette instead of dipping the brush each time because it dries so fast, and i need a thicker brush for broader areas. But it looks good, all told. The lightest areas are basically dirty water. Ink buckles paper the way watercolours do.
Colour wash: so i got inks to try and learn to place values with the ink (shadows and highlights) and then colours with the watercolour on top, mimicing a digital style I like and also as a way to practice values as separate from getting distracted by hues.
This model was caucasian, and I've seen youtube artists make this work for caucasian characters, but it's clear the level of underpainting I've done will never translate to a caucasian character (at least, not with thin watercolours). The overall effect is pretty fab, tho.
It's an orange wash, that warms up the inks, with royal blue in the shadows - the latter is amazing. There's also some orange+white=caucasian pink here and there, which is better than the harshness of orange on its own. I then tried to put butter yellow, or pastel yellow, onto the highlights - and this was a failure, I think; watercolours need that white glowing through.
but all told, a satisfying painting!