Sometimes when I run out of ideas, I stare at the trees outside my window. Occasionally, I draw or sketch them:
Since I am a bit running out of topic recently, I turned my window scene into a couple of paintings:
There are usually squirrels dancing on the branches and crows meeting on those roofs, and once in a while, I am waken up by wood peckers attacking the trunks. Some day, I will manage to catch them in my “window paintings.” 🙂
I know Crayola is a kid brand, and I don’t think Crayola Washable Markers are made for watercolor artists. However, for your daily doodling, and small art projects, they work wonders. The markers have conical tips that allow both broad and thin lines, and the colors are quite vibrant:
I recently got hold of a different brand, Tombow Dual Brush Pen Art Markers. You can see from the way it’s packaged (Primary, Secondary, Grayscale, Portrait etc.), Towbow is for artist. With a nylon brush on one side and a fine tip on the other, you can achieve more versatile marks with it. I tried Tombow and Crayola side by side and find them behave similarly:
A few notes:
Caran d’Ache is a brand not a specific product, but I only know that now! The product is Caran d’Ache Classic Neocolor II Water-Soluble Pastels. My former watercolor teacher introduced it to me many years ago, and called it Caran d’Ache. Even though I bought a 40 colors pack, all these years, I never bothered to read the words on the package, and thus I never knew it was pastel!
I didn’t like Caran d’Ache back then. It’s waxy and leaves a mark like that of a crayon. It also won’t completely dissolve in water. I didn’t appreciate texture very much at that time, and was afraid of any mark that I couldn’t get rid of or hide. I only recently started to pay attention to marks making and textures, and how they enrich composition and set free expression. That why I decided to give the product more chances.
Here are some of ways I tried. First I just used it to sketch, and them apply water and watercolor on top of it. Toward the end, I used them to add more accents.
I also tried to wet the paper first, with some color, and then applied the Caran d’Ache before the paper dried. Some color bleeds more than others. In the red color figure, I went back and force a bit with the pastel and a wet brush to achieve a desirable result. In the greenish one, the paper dried quickly, and I was only able to do a drawing.
Here a lot of the design in the painting came as an after thought, and Caran d’Ache is a very convenient tool to draw out ideas. While it won’t completely dissolve, it’s easy to hide it with gouache, and it’s also effective in adding textures:
A few notes about Caran d’Ache:
For the first 75 days, see
Click on the thumbnails to see a bigger image:
For the first 50 days, see 100 Day Art Challenge (1) – Day 1 to Day 25, and 100 Day Art Challenge (2) – Day 26 to Day 50.
Click on the thumbnails to see a bigger image:
My site zhisu.art just grows a bit with new pages on “Watercolors“, “Acrylics“, and “Oils“. Please take a look and click on each image to see more.
I also updated the “About” page, now “Meet the Artist” to expose a little more about me.
Putting oneself out there is not easy, and I will do it one step a time. 🙂
Amedeo Modigliani is an Italian artist famous for his uniquely stylized portraits. I always like his paintings and attempted a study years before. Somehow Modigliani’s Madame Amédée reminded me of my neighbor’s cat, and my original plan was to use the composition of the original painting, and replace the head with that of a cat’s. It didn’t work out and I switched back to the lady. The result wasn’t much of a copy, and you can still see the trace of my deviation.
Original
My copy:
This is another try. This time it was not a copy, but I tried to stylize a self-portrait. I meant to focus on the inner world of subject, but somehow it was all spilled over into the background. As a result I went way beyond his typical palette, which is quite muted.
After learning drawing and painting humans for a while, I find myself even more fascinated by Modigliani’s ability to go beyond realist forms while stay true to the spirit and character of his subjects. I probably will do more studies of Modigliani in future.
For the first 25 days, see 100 Day Art Challenge (1) – Day 1 to Day 25
Click on the thumbnails to see bigger images:
I did a watercolor painting on pre-matted rice paper (xuan paper) before, and I tried it again recently with different paints:
A few notes:
I’ve been doing the 100 Day Art Challenge at New Masters Academy for a while. I chose to focus on the figures and portraits for this challenge. Here are the first 25 days of the paintings and drawings I’ve done.
Take a look (click on the thumbnail to see a bigger image) :
ZHI SU 