29 juin 2008
mouse doing his homework (I'm back!)
This painting reminds me of the time when I used to give drawings and paintings to girls just to impress them and maybe get a date :) fortunately those times have passed away and now I know a bit more of how to conquer girls and not get too serious (yes, give some flowers or drawings to a girl that you just met some days ago it's not a good idea) too soon.
About the painting, it's done with watercolors and consist of a mouse doing his homework (here in El Salvador, we call this type of homework "planas" and basically consist of repeat over and over again a symbol or character just to make your writing better).
In the painting I remember that I tried to make the mouse wear some "cool jeans" and that was the focus in my painting. And what makes some cool jeans? well I think that maybe the jeans should look a little bit old and scratched, so to make the effect believable I did the following:
- Grab some cool brush
- Prepare the blue of the jeans (maybe a mix of phthalo blue with cobalt blue)
- Fill the brush with the blue color that you just created
- This is the important trick, make sure that the brush just get slightly filled with blue, just remove the excess of blue maybe with a napkin paper.
- Make a few brush strokes, you'll notice that the stroke is kind of "dry" and it leaves some blank spaces interlaced with blue.
Here is the final drawing: (FIGURE 1)
FIGURE 1 A mouse doing his "planas".
See ya soon! :)
16 mars 2008
Senna river watercolor
I think I did this watercolor three years ago (when I still used to paint watercolor paintings) for a friend. I take inspiration from a picture of the Senna and at the end I was really happy because the result was better than I expected; if you've painted with watercolors before, you know that is really a hard technique to master, just like is very quick to get nice results, also you really need to have a plan before put the brush on the paper, because once you've made the stroke you have sometimes to react very quickly.
Let me share some tips of this painting with you:
- For the clouds I dampen the paper slightly (only where the clouds are supposed to be) with some clean water and then with a nice hue of blue (phthalo blue) I painted the sky leaving some blank spaces for the clouds. Take some towel paper or napkin paper if you notice that the blue is spreading too much.
- For the trees and plants I used a "sea sponge" (one of my favorite painting tools) and starting from the lightest color (yellow), I made some sponge prints on the paper.
- For the water I used some layers of painting. The first layers are very transparent and then the successive ones are more opaque, so that means that you have to use less water at the time of mixing the watercolors. At this time take advantage and while the paint in the river border (just next to the wall) is still damp take some earth hues and paint slightly on the border, use this same technique for the boat border.
- For the boat waves use some sandpaper. Use it carefully and slightly.
Here is the painting:
Finally I wish I could have some free time, lately I have a lot of things to do regarding the University, the work, etc. So is since a while that I don't paint but in the near future if God gives me life, I'm going to paint again. I remember that times when I used to paint, I felt very spontaneous and happy!
See ya later and as always thanks for reading :)