Ahhh. Frustration. Nothing like it to make you feel like crap! Or to push you past your comfort zone.
Comfort zone: Ink, watercolor washes.
Sort of comfort zone: pencil drawing.
Disaster! Warning! Alarm zone: Watercolors! We won’t even consider these at present.
Comfort Zone
There are times when a good book helps you out a lot. These are studies copied from a book by Claudia Nice. What is good about these kinds of studies is that there is detail, but not a desire to be so realistic you are going to scream, if super realism is not your thing. (It’s not mine.) Here, you will fine stippling and hatching, and cross-hatching. Each of these brings dimension and texture. Add some watercolor washes, and it can really make things pop out.
Sort of Comfort Zone
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I have never really done any formal consideration of pencil drawing. To me it seems counter-intuitive to think about pencil drawings beyond pencil drawings of a casual quality, like the scribbles and doodles students turn in with their work. Rather, I looked at a drawing book from the library and had a deeper appreciation for the textures pencils can make. As with pen and ink, stippling and hatching are at work – but so are circles and lines in varying directions, along with lines which depict texture, such as the little hook-shaped lines at the very bottom.
Alarm Zone!
Today, I filled up a palette with watercolor pigments. Now, I am slowly studying washes and wet-into-wet. I am also using a whole slough of pigments I have never used and dropping some of my old standbys. I am feeling like crap. But, perseverance. Onward.
Whatever.
