Hi everyone! 😄
I'm happy to come back today with some watercolour attempts.
Watercolour is a technique that has always fascinated me, but seemed really difficult. In fact, I find oil painting easier than watercolour, contrary to what everyone says.
And the first attempts I made with watercolour a few years ago didn't convince me to continue with this technique.
-But that was the past. I tried again a bit with my previous art and even though it wasn't the main technique, handling watercolour seemed pretty cool to me, so I wanted to play more with this technique.
As the new year is slowly approaching, I have been thinking about making the 2024 calendar.
Every year I used to make a personalised calendar, often with pictures of my dog.
But this year I wanted to make a calendar with drawings; as the time is quite short, I had to find simple ideas to paint, not too complex.
Looking for ideas on the internet, I found cool calendars with seasonal vegetables for each month. So it seemed like a good idea to do something like that, but with painted vegetables. And watercolour is the perfect technique for that.
Watercolour seems to be the perfect technique for food in general, don't you think? 😉
So I made some attempts (first to see if I could make a not too ugly calendar lol).
I don't have much theoretical knowledge of watercolour, I read some advice on the internet and improvised most of the time. I just understood the fact that all the difficulty in watercolour is in controlling the water.
Water should be our ally, not our enemy. And that's the point for me; I failed for years for that reason. I didn't control the water because I didn't understand how it works.
So now I try to observe, but also think about the science and logic behind it.
So for the kiwi, I started with a mixture of mostly green and a little yellow and blue to make the main colour. When it was dry, I did another layer of that colour darker to create nuances.
Then I got a new colour, darker to the darkest part of the kiwi.
Finally, I took a small brush and added some black dots to make the seeds.
I also had some lighting details.
After this first attempt, I tried to make a chestnut. I liked the colour but found it hard to give it texture. (I should point out that it's a zoom scan of a 4cm drawing 😆)
And then I made tomatoes; and it was not so easy!
I don't know why, as the kiwi seemed so easy, but the tomatoes were a bit of a struggle.
Maybe it's because the paper I used for the tests wasn't so good for touching up, but when I tried to make some nuances in the tomato, both with dry and wet paper, it made some dirty marks.
This is definitely what gives me away as a beginner lol
So, my calendar idea seems good, as long as I use a better paper (especially if I do several fruits on the same page) and if I practice a bit to make sure I know what to do - watercolour is a bit scary, you are never really sure of the final result 😁.
Hope you like it!
I'll be back soon with seasonal fruit 😊🥕🍊