Valentines and a Red Ribbon

Another group update...  but first, a word of explanation.  As you know, I love to make Valentines, and since I'm doing a watercolor project this year, naturally I figured I'd do watercolor Valentines!  With that in mind, I bought a little pack of 4"x6" watercolor postcards, and started experimenting...

02.07.18

Oh.  Oh no.

The very first thing I realized was just how spoiled I am to have such high-quality paper in my sketchbook.  Because the quality of these "postcards"?  Er... not so hot.  In fact, I'd say it borders on awful, and honestly it blows my mind just how terrible the experience of painting on it was.  But I thought to myself, "I won't let myself be limited... I just have to figure out how to work around it!" and I kept at it...

02.08.18

Er....

...and continued to be aggravated...

02.09.18

...to the point were I really wanted to scrawl across this one, "A crappy Valentine is better than no Valentine, right??"  (but I didn't.)

Still no.

02.10.18

So after three days of working on very dispiriting things, I decided to give myself a break, and paint a blue jay in my sketch book.

Blue Jay of Happiness?

I was very grumpy with it the day that I did it, but in retrospect I'm actually fairly pleased with how it came out.

02.11.18

And the next day I still couldn't face going back to the awful paper, so I did something else fun:

The Red Ribbon

Although to tell you the truth, I want to give it more line work, but it's fine, it's fine...

02.12.18

The next day was Monday, and the day I started studying for my Series 7, which means that by the end of the day I didn't have much left in the way of brain power, so I went ahead and tried the crap paper again, and made a silly little Valentine for TLG.

Sweets for the sweet.

It's not so bad, I suppose, and by that point I'd started to figure out how to work within the limitations of the media, which led me to the following night...

02.13.18

...and the making Nathan's Valentine!

Altered Love

So basically the key to painting on this paper is to not to attempt to blend or layer colors at all.  And accept that you're not going to have anything resembling a smooth wash.  And I will probably just give the remainder to TLG to play with, because as much as Nathan enjoyed his Altered-Carbon-inspired-valentine*, the paper is really just the worst.

The schedule that I'm keeping for studying is pretty much as intense as I'd feared, so expect more of these grouped-updates in the future, because while I might have time to sketch or do a quick painting, it's going to be rare that I also have the time to actually post it.  And most likely it will be a Tuesday or Thursday, when Nathan has Bedtime Duties.  So hang in there, Gentle Readers, and we'll get through this Very Busy Season together...




*(in case you were wondering, the show more than lives up to the book: it's freaking amazing and I can't recommend it enough.  And I 100% want a Hello Unicorn shirt...)