Watching Paint Dry, Again
I'm working on a self portrait, but not scanning it yet. I sketched it last night and put the sketch in Scraps on my DeviantART account, but the scan didn't really show the line of the side of my face, so it looks pretty weird.
Right now it looks cartoonish. The black leather jacket and black t-shirt are gray, but shaded, because the shading on clothes is looser. My face has a flat thin Burnt Sienna wash that looks like cartoon coloring and my hair got a flat Raw Umber wash that makes it look blond. Which is really weird, it's much darker but I wanted that as a flat wash to get the basic color in and then shadow heavily over it. Unfortunately, my Artist set did not get Burnt Umber, it's got Raw Umber, which is a golden color not much darker than Yellow Ochre. Very frustrating when I got used to having Burnt Umber all the time in my old set, and Sap Green. But the black takes the place of the Burnt Umber and presumably I'm supposed to darken browns with blue or black.
I tweaked the arrangement of my writing/drawing area by putting my new barely-used electric pencil sharpener on the end table instead of way over on the top shelf of the three shelf folding bookcase, where it was sitting between my scanner and opaque projector. I found an unused plug on the three-prong extension cord my clock and lamp are on, so now it's got a permanent place to plug in. I wasn't using it mostly because juggling plugs on the power strip made it more trouble to use that than to just grab a manual sharpener. But it really is fairly gentle on colored pencils and it's darn handy when Sascha wants her colored pencils sharpened, something that already used up two of my good artist pencil sharpeners already. Not that I grudge it, she's so cute when she comes up with pencils to be sharpened. But it's easier in the electric one and it's faster -- she has the patience of a three year old.
I'm sitting around waiting for paint to dry so that I can put in the shadows and details that will make this look like a portrait, and nervous about how it'll come out. Normally I do portraits well, but this is a bit large for a watercolor one. They work great in very small miniature size, like under an inch tall, but this is larger and it might get blotchy from the paint or get hard-edged shadows where I want soft edges or other trouble. Watercolor's less predictable than colored pencils.
Of course if it really sucks I'll go over it with colored pencil and then it won't. But I would rather succeed at doing it in watercolor. No words yet but I got good count last night, we'll see what I get later on.
Sascha just asked me to make her a bird. :)
Right now it looks cartoonish. The black leather jacket and black t-shirt are gray, but shaded, because the shading on clothes is looser. My face has a flat thin Burnt Sienna wash that looks like cartoon coloring and my hair got a flat Raw Umber wash that makes it look blond. Which is really weird, it's much darker but I wanted that as a flat wash to get the basic color in and then shadow heavily over it. Unfortunately, my Artist set did not get Burnt Umber, it's got Raw Umber, which is a golden color not much darker than Yellow Ochre. Very frustrating when I got used to having Burnt Umber all the time in my old set, and Sap Green. But the black takes the place of the Burnt Umber and presumably I'm supposed to darken browns with blue or black.
I tweaked the arrangement of my writing/drawing area by putting my new barely-used electric pencil sharpener on the end table instead of way over on the top shelf of the three shelf folding bookcase, where it was sitting between my scanner and opaque projector. I found an unused plug on the three-prong extension cord my clock and lamp are on, so now it's got a permanent place to plug in. I wasn't using it mostly because juggling plugs on the power strip made it more trouble to use that than to just grab a manual sharpener. But it really is fairly gentle on colored pencils and it's darn handy when Sascha wants her colored pencils sharpened, something that already used up two of my good artist pencil sharpeners already. Not that I grudge it, she's so cute when she comes up with pencils to be sharpened. But it's easier in the electric one and it's faster -- she has the patience of a three year old.
I'm sitting around waiting for paint to dry so that I can put in the shadows and details that will make this look like a portrait, and nervous about how it'll come out. Normally I do portraits well, but this is a bit large for a watercolor one. They work great in very small miniature size, like under an inch tall, but this is larger and it might get blotchy from the paint or get hard-edged shadows where I want soft edges or other trouble. Watercolor's less predictable than colored pencils.
Of course if it really sucks I'll go over it with colored pencil and then it won't. But I would rather succeed at doing it in watercolor. No words yet but I got good count last night, we'll see what I get later on.
Sascha just asked me to make her a bird. :)