24 November 2013

Studying my colours

Recently I’ve noticed of the worst features I could have in my life: I am a workaholic. But this workaholism is not about Art, studying French of other things I like to do. It’s all about my work, which is not even close to visual arts. If I have a huge project to complete in two weeks, I’ll complete it in a week and then get another one. I feel myself exhausted, the lack of sleep doesn’t make me happy, I don’t see my friends as often as I would like… I am not even mentioning my hobbies and a simple desire to lie down on a couch with a good book and a cup of tea!
So, I decided that it’s time for a big change. I am tired that my work rules my life and I’d like for it to be vice versa.
I’ve been studying my colours. In one of the blogs I’ve read about the exercises students do in the College of Illustration, so I decided to follow and do them by myself. It was a lot of fun, and I really discovered something new about my palette, my preferences when choosing the colours and how to handle the colours I really don’t like.
The first task was to mix as many greens as possible having only primary colours. I chose Cadmium Yellow, Cadmiun Red and Ultraviolet.

26 October 2013

10 hours



So, it’s time to record my first hours.
Last week I took my paints and started to work. Soon I realized that my pause in Art served me badly. I wanted to do a live painting as the sky I was observing through my window was more than just fantastic. I did not succeed. At that moment I was more than dissapointed, but then I decided to stop whining and just work.
I grabbed the watercolour tutorial book and chose the photo I’d like to paint. And I tried to follow the tutorial the book provided, but did not suit me completely. But due to this, I’ve learned many things about my palette, materials and attitude.
I failed many times.

Wroooong!

Even though some of them look kinda nice on the photo, they’re all horrible in real life, I guess. And, some of the paper sheets have pics on the other sides, too.

21 August 2013

Inspiration post #1

Today's post is all about inspiration.

One of my favourite illustrators of all time is Veronika Kalacheva, a very talented young lady from Russia. Her art represents what true watercolour is to me: light, tender, expressing the mood, the connection between form and colour, unexpected and effective colour decisions. Every time I look on her pictures I feel like I am a part of the story, like I've been there before. Maybe, that is the reason why I like Veronika's art so much!
I think, her works are the role model for me. Sometimes I see some pics and I appreciate the talent and work behind them, but rarely I say to myself that I'd like to paint like that. Not in this case. These watercolours represent the technique that I'd like to master in future. I am not fond of realism, there's no expression of a personal view to me (yet, I think, those who do realism are talented and do great job), but here is everything I want: mood, the whiteness of a paper that almost blinds you, and wonderful strokes, and they ain't that easy to do, you know!




28 June 2013

New Artwork: The Black Peonies

It is finally done!
I started it looong time ago, I think, in March. Then I had so much work to do, so I didn't touch it all May.
I'm still not very satisfied completely. It is very close to what I wanted to achieve, but still something is missing. Yet, I have some homework to do, yeah.

The Black Peonies


Graphite on Canson grey paper
2013