Paint Nite 6: Hedgehog
Two has recently jumped on the "Hedgehogs are adorable" bandwagon - he got a hedgehog calendar for Christmas, and an adorable plush baby hedgehog from hamsterwoman and family. So, when he saw this Paint Nite offering, he asked if I might do it to hang in his room. Since all the other ones I'd done had been landscapes, I figured this was a nice chance to learn how to paint things and not just water, rocks and trees.
Here's the original model, as shown on the website:
As with the "seabirds on the shore" picture, this was an offering from a California teacher - the Los Angeles area again. In fact ... it ended up being the same teacher, lol. (They don't usually show who the teacher is until the day of, and I'd already signed up by then.) First repeat teacher I'd had, and it was interesting to go into a project already knowing the teacher's style and techniques. Some of that was good - I like his laid-back attitude in general - and some of that meant that I knew he would be doing the "mix your paints ON the canvas" thing, which hadn't worked so well for me before. But: forewarned is forearmed!
However, before we even started that, I saw his model picture. Every teacher paints the model on his/her own, and that almost always has some variation on the original website model. Most of the time, it's close enough, or has its own nice twist, but I hated his model:
I hated the background color and pinkish tint to the hedgehog's face, hated how much lower he sat in the cup, disliked his flowers, and the way his cup was narrower at the bottom. Nope, nope, nope. I pulled up the website model on my phone, and referred to that instead, as we got to each step.
The first thing we did was give a sketchy yellow outline to the hedgehog-in-cup shape, with two circular blobs on each side where the flowers were going to go, just as a placeholder, then painted the background all around it. I knew he was going to mix his own brown with a blend of the available colors but - hah! - I had some brown acrylic paint from some prior craft project the kids had done, so I just used that - streaks of randomly-placed brown, then blended with white on top of that. (Ok, he did say we could use any color for the background, so I could just as much have done, say, a purple or blue mottled background, but I liked the original brown, so I stuck with that.)
Next, we outlined the teacup with more intent, and painted the leaves. I did try the blue-and-yellow-on-the-brush thing to make the green for the leaves, but then ended up blending some on my palette and using that. I didn't over-mix it, so there were still some natural highlights/lowlights on the leaves, but I liked it better than mixing-it-on-the-canvas.
Then we colored in the teacup - a little blue on the darker side, white on the light-source side, and blended toward the blue, to create the shading. I was pleased with how this turned out.
The teacher's tactic with the flower petals (which, again, we were invited to do in any color, but I stuck with yellow) was to repeat exactly what had been done with the leaves. But that made fat-petaled flowers, and I wanted thinner petals, like the model, so I used a finer brush. This took several coats to cover the green, applied in between other steps, as each coat dried. We also blended some light brown for the hedgehog's face. (Again, I just used the brown I already possessed, with a little white thrown in.) A little black for the eyes, nose, ears and mouth. The one "blending on the canvas" thing that did work was painting the dark quills - with a brush dipped in both black and white. It created natural texture with the spines.
When he had us start to paint in the white quills for the body, I realized I had somehow missed the step of painting the *inside* of the cup, so I hastened to do that, with a light blue, and then had to wait for that to dry before I could finish the quills that went over the blue.
We also did the teabag string, the tag with the heart, and a little blue shadow for both of those things. Added the wee paws (with black-dot claws), white highlights in the eyes, grey dots for the nostrils, and the optional flower by the hedgehog's ear. As I said, I was also adding more layers to the white quills and to the yellow flowers.
In the end, I was pretty pleased overall (ok, I wish I'd made his eyes a little bigger), and glad I had followed the website model more than the teacher's (although his live-painted result was better than his before-class model). Two pointed out that there's a fair amount of blank space at the top of the page, although that was true of the original as well. And since it'll be easier to fit that into an 8x10"/20x25cm frame, I can just lop off a couple inches from the top (paper is 9x12" 22.8/30.5cm) to make it fit, and it'll balance the image a bit more, as well.
Speaking of art stuff: I'm debating buying this drawing course for human body parts. I can do faces but am not so great with other body parts. Has anyone ever done these courses? I mean, I can hardly go wrong for $1, but still - is it worth my time?
Will got Fri and this coming Mon off in exchange for working straight through Palm Sunday weekend, doing a major update to the college's computer systems. He kindly gave up his afternoon yesterday in order to help me get the veggie garden ready: picking up and shoveling in 5 cubic yards (3.8cu meters) of compost from the local garden center. Or rather, he shoveled it off the truck into the garden, and I shoveled it around the garden to better spread it out. The garden probably only needed 4.5 cu yds, but it's not like we could buy it that way. He didn't have time to rototill it in, but hopefully tomorrow. (Today was lightly raining until after lunch.). And then hopefully I can start planting some of the cooler-weather stuff, with an eye to planting other things in another week or two. Yay!
Today was more of a "meh" day. I have a nasty knot in my left shoulder blade from yesterday's work (despite the hot bath I took last night) which keeps stabbing me unexpectedly if I move or turn my head wrong. It was chilly and damp, I wasn't in the mood to do anything, and tired of all the people I have to live with. How much longer am I stuck in here??
Here's the original model, as shown on the website:
As with the "seabirds on the shore" picture, this was an offering from a California teacher - the Los Angeles area again. In fact ... it ended up being the same teacher, lol. (They don't usually show who the teacher is until the day of, and I'd already signed up by then.) First repeat teacher I'd had, and it was interesting to go into a project already knowing the teacher's style and techniques. Some of that was good - I like his laid-back attitude in general - and some of that meant that I knew he would be doing the "mix your paints ON the canvas" thing, which hadn't worked so well for me before. But: forewarned is forearmed!
However, before we even started that, I saw his model picture. Every teacher paints the model on his/her own, and that almost always has some variation on the original website model. Most of the time, it's close enough, or has its own nice twist, but I hated his model:
I hated the background color and pinkish tint to the hedgehog's face, hated how much lower he sat in the cup, disliked his flowers, and the way his cup was narrower at the bottom. Nope, nope, nope. I pulled up the website model on my phone, and referred to that instead, as we got to each step.
The first thing we did was give a sketchy yellow outline to the hedgehog-in-cup shape, with two circular blobs on each side where the flowers were going to go, just as a placeholder, then painted the background all around it. I knew he was going to mix his own brown with a blend of the available colors but - hah! - I had some brown acrylic paint from some prior craft project the kids had done, so I just used that - streaks of randomly-placed brown, then blended with white on top of that. (Ok, he did say we could use any color for the background, so I could just as much have done, say, a purple or blue mottled background, but I liked the original brown, so I stuck with that.)
Next, we outlined the teacup with more intent, and painted the leaves. I did try the blue-and-yellow-on-the-brush thing to make the green for the leaves, but then ended up blending some on my palette and using that. I didn't over-mix it, so there were still some natural highlights/lowlights on the leaves, but I liked it better than mixing-it-on-the-canvas.
Then we colored in the teacup - a little blue on the darker side, white on the light-source side, and blended toward the blue, to create the shading. I was pleased with how this turned out.
The teacher's tactic with the flower petals (which, again, we were invited to do in any color, but I stuck with yellow) was to repeat exactly what had been done with the leaves. But that made fat-petaled flowers, and I wanted thinner petals, like the model, so I used a finer brush. This took several coats to cover the green, applied in between other steps, as each coat dried. We also blended some light brown for the hedgehog's face. (Again, I just used the brown I already possessed, with a little white thrown in.) A little black for the eyes, nose, ears and mouth. The one "blending on the canvas" thing that did work was painting the dark quills - with a brush dipped in both black and white. It created natural texture with the spines.
When he had us start to paint in the white quills for the body, I realized I had somehow missed the step of painting the *inside* of the cup, so I hastened to do that, with a light blue, and then had to wait for that to dry before I could finish the quills that went over the blue.
We also did the teabag string, the tag with the heart, and a little blue shadow for both of those things. Added the wee paws (with black-dot claws), white highlights in the eyes, grey dots for the nostrils, and the optional flower by the hedgehog's ear. As I said, I was also adding more layers to the white quills and to the yellow flowers.
In the end, I was pretty pleased overall (ok, I wish I'd made his eyes a little bigger), and glad I had followed the website model more than the teacher's (although his live-painted result was better than his before-class model). Two pointed out that there's a fair amount of blank space at the top of the page, although that was true of the original as well. And since it'll be easier to fit that into an 8x10"/20x25cm frame, I can just lop off a couple inches from the top (paper is 9x12" 22.8/30.5cm) to make it fit, and it'll balance the image a bit more, as well.
Speaking of art stuff: I'm debating buying this drawing course for human body parts. I can do faces but am not so great with other body parts. Has anyone ever done these courses? I mean, I can hardly go wrong for $1, but still - is it worth my time?
Will got Fri and this coming Mon off in exchange for working straight through Palm Sunday weekend, doing a major update to the college's computer systems. He kindly gave up his afternoon yesterday in order to help me get the veggie garden ready: picking up and shoveling in 5 cubic yards (3.8cu meters) of compost from the local garden center. Or rather, he shoveled it off the truck into the garden, and I shoveled it around the garden to better spread it out. The garden probably only needed 4.5 cu yds, but it's not like we could buy it that way. He didn't have time to rototill it in, but hopefully tomorrow. (Today was lightly raining until after lunch.). And then hopefully I can start planting some of the cooler-weather stuff, with an eye to planting other things in another week or two. Yay!
Today was more of a "meh" day. I have a nasty knot in my left shoulder blade from yesterday's work (despite the hot bath I took last night) which keeps stabbing me unexpectedly if I move or turn my head wrong. It was chilly and damp, I wasn't in the mood to do anything, and tired of all the people I have to live with. How much longer am I stuck in here??