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.

After all these effords I decided to do it at my own.My main mistake was masking fluid. The tutorial suggested to mask the bright sides of the clouds to achieve this nice yellow|orange sunlight effect. I tried, and it was a disaster. I could not use it properly, my masking was too thick, and that’s why when I rubbed it off the effect I was trying to get wasn’t there. Instead I had horrible white spots.

As you see, some of the pics aren’t that bad, but I don’t life for a couple of reasons:

• wrong blue;
• ugly shapes of clouds;
• the sunlight zone is very… flat.

So, I didn’t use any masking. Instead, I started a gradual wash of deep Prussian Blue+Cobalt Violet+English Rose,   and then I introduced Golden and Napoly Yellow. Then I worked on the under clouds: pale Prussian Blue+Cobalt Violet+English Rose and while it was still wet, I took some paint away with a paper tissue. I let it sit and repeated everything after it became dry.

The clouds were done with deep Prussian Blue and flat brush. I let everything dry and then applied clean water wash. I waited around 5 min: the trick is to let water almost dry, like 80%, only then I did clouds.

The sea was pretty simple: Prussian Blue+Cobal Violet – I did a wash as well, then I made it darker with Cobalt Violet. The stones were painted almost with pure Cobalt Violet.

After everything got dry, I did a wash of Golden+Napoly Yellow to create warmth.

The result is here

What I’ve learned:

Masking is definately not for me. For now. Maybe, I will learn to use it successfully.