telophase | (no subject)

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Hrmph. I really ought to take a watercolor class or something. I'd love to be able to do something like this, either in watercolor or digital, but I seem to lack the gene that allows me to use super-saturated colors and to combine seemingly random colors in random places and have them turn out looking good.

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Watercolor always throws me for a loop because you have to paint what seems to be backwards if you're used to opaque colors. Shadows first, then flats, then you don't touch highlights. It seems to take a bit more planning for me to do watercolors than what I'm used to.

Yeah, I think that's part of my problem, along with a not-very-good grasp of color theory. I'm getting better at letting the color of the paper/canvas serve as the highlights as I use markers, though.

That's something that takes quite a bit of experimentation as well as trial and error. Some people seem to have a knack for it!

I'm not one of them.

I lack the ability to experiment with no final aim in mind (and to remember anything I did once I experimented) - I have to have some sort of goal with the artwork. I also lack the ability to draw and paint loosely*, and if I attempt to do a sketchy, expressive sketch, like for a watercolor, I end up failing because somewhere I'm looking for rules to explain where I do and don't draw lines, ad where I make them dark or light, and where I let them go loose and where I make them tight and controlled. *twitch*

* Starting to get there a bit with recent pics, but they've been really bloody hard to do that. I think maybe I'm a natural Old Masters oil painter type of artist.

One thing that helped me, and this sounds like some kind of crazy cheating, is recalling 'Paint by Numbers' projects I used to do when I was young. The color blocking without blending was really useful to apply to watercolor, I've found.

Keep stabbing at it. Watercolor does have several applications and differs in effects if you're using the dry color blocks or the concentrated tubes. Kung-foo has some great examples. I can't remember if she's ever posted a tutorial anywhere. But I do know she works on cheap paper which is super absorbent.

Hee - I'll have to try that. XD

Oh man, watercolor is hard to pick up just by yourself. It's so totally unlike any other kind of painting, and it has its own special rules and everything.

I took watercolor lessons, like, fifteen years ago, and it was the first actual painting class I'd ever had, and I was pretty good for a while. Then I started doing acrylics, and now I can't do watercolors at all. I've totally forgotten how they work.

So yeah. Watercolor class = very helpful.

They're not offering any this semester in the extended education classes my school offers (as staff, I get to take them for half price XD), although I note their second session of life drawing is still open, so I may indulge in that.

Hopefully next semester they'll have a watercolor class. I took the oil class through it and enjoyed it a lot.

I don't understand paint at all ... never have, even when I was doing artsy stuff of some sort or another almost every day (mostly either pencil or ink drawings or crafts stuff - batik, paper-cutting). The closest I got to anything I liked with paint was watercolor wash over ink drawings ... so I admire your efforts very much.

Oil painting seems more natural to me than anything else, but I still have to work hard to get past the part where you're just dabbing paint on and it looks awful and looks awful and looks awful right up to the point where it stops looking awful.

But I love the happy accidents that oil paint allows for. In the Temporarily Under Friendslock Painting that everyone loves, the musculature in the forearms is 90% happy accident. XD

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