Art is like a pile of turtles - Beginner seeking advice :-)
I’m still feeling the “I wanna make some art” urge. I found a picture of a pile of turtles that I took a few months ago and decided it would be my inspiration. In real life, as you can see below, there were only two turtles in the pile, but I’m sure they were aiming higher! Given enough time, another one would have come along…
This is a cry for help! I have no idea what I’m doing - just making it up as I go along. If you have even a tiny clue more about using watercolors than I do, or any suggestions at all, really, I would love to have them! For instance, how can I define the edges between colors without having a big old black line? I could probably improve this, but I’m stuck! This is only my 2nd attempt ever.
First I sketched the scene, adding a third turtle for fun. If I try to draw even the simplest thing on the white board when I am teaching, as a demonstration or whatever, it invariably looks like a drunk jellyfish. But if I have something to go from, it’s soooooo much easier!
Then I dove in with the paint! So far so good, for the most part. I used a little too much water in the left side of the big turtle’s shell and it got all blurry.
No matter - I ended up painting over it several times. I didn’t really mean to make their skin green, but I was having trouble differentiating the colors between the rocks and the turtles otherwise. I’m no pro, but I’m not even too embarrassed to claim this. Maybe I can do some art! Maybe we call can!
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What have you been working on lately?
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All photos by me: Orangina
Written with StackEdit.
Awesome start! You had mentioned to me in your post that you were giving watercolors a go, good stuff :)
I said in my post and I'll reiterate here. My best rules for myself are light to dark, background to foreground.
Easy enough right? lol
I usually squint my eyes to get rid of as much detail as possible so that I'm only looking at the image to find the lightest lights and darkest darks. I'll slowly open my eyes to reveal more information but I try to keep the "big picture" or "simplest idea" in my head as I start to paint. Watercolors add pigment so if you've got a highlight or a really lit up plane you definitely want to be careful about adding color there because once you lose the white of the page your highlights are gone. When you're in the sketch phase it's a good idea to mark out a few areas where your "super highlights" are going to be and be sure to save them when you're painting.
I'm a rambler so I'll stop myself. Ive followed you so I'll be sure to check in every so often to see what you're painting up. Thanks for popping over to my blog, happy painting! :D
Thank you so much for your feedback and tips @fumansiu! I will definitely watch your time lapse videos to see how you do it. I watched a couple of tutorials too. Looks like I was basically only doing wet on dry - didn't even know I could wet the paper first. Newbie problems :-) Now I just need a subject for my next attempt. Thanks for stopping by - I appreciate it!
That is really cute and unique! Bravo! 😊
Thanks! It was fun! All this time I've been wishing I could "do art" or whatever, but anyone can! It might not be a masterwork, but it can still be satisfying and enjoyable :-)
Its ten times better than what I would be able to draw LOL! good job!
Thank you so much! But you might be surprised - I only discovered I could sort of draw stuff as long as I have a model when my son started making me draw the Octonauts for him (they are pretty simple though). Give it a try! In all your spare time! BTW, my friend @k8n8r finally got approved and I sent her directly to your posts for "noobs" :-) Cheers!
I want to see the drunk jellyfish!