2nd 20 by 30

For my second 20 by 30 watercolor, I decided to paint another landscape, a sunset! I've always wanted to paint a pretty sunset in watercolor/paint. This time, it was less difficult, because I knew what I was going to expect. I made the watercolor less runny and waited for it to dry, before I would paint over a section. I took my time this time around. It turned out very colorful, because I had to get every accent of color, purple, blue, magenta, yellow, etc. For the water, I painted in bits to create a neat reflection for the water. I like it, I really love all of the colors.

Product

I wanted to paint a pretzel, I thought it would be interesting. Who knew that it would be such a pain to mix so many different shades of brown? Whoops. This took about 5 hours to finish. I actually free-handed the pretzel, that's why some parts are a little odd looking. Aside from the amount of time to finish, I actually enjoyed this project, because it helped me improve my watercoloring abilities. I'm just glad that it ended up looking like a pretzel.

5 Digital with line art

I decided to do simple line art pieces with color. Since I'm not the best at using the wacom tablet, I stuck with simple images. They look like pages off of a coloring book. I really like the bunny in the hot air balloon. Once I started getting the hang of using the pen, I stopped using the mouse to click on things, which was really nice.

Landscape watercolor

This was my first landscape watercolor. I just typed in landscape in the search bar on flickr and found this cottage in the woods. I think it was like the first time using watercolor on a huge sheet of paper, so it was very difficult to handle the watercolor on such a large space. I wish I made the sunset/sunrise better, blended in more colors. I wish the trees were more defined and the foreground looked better.

Self Portraits

Here are my 5 Watercolor Self Portraits with Line Art. I took pictures and printed them out and transferred it on a 7x7 piece of watercolor paper using the Lucy. I feel like they could have looked better, because I was just rushing to finish them at 2am. I like the perspective of the one where my top is purple, it is my favorite. On the one where I'm looking forward with my glasses, I messed up on the face, black got in the cream color, so it made my chin dark, so I had to go over it over and over again with the cream color. Overall, I think it was a good attempt.

5 Wacom Sketches

We had to do 5 sketches digitally on the Wacom Tablet. I'm starting to get used to it, but it's annoying when I keep pressing the button on the pen and the little menu pops up every time. I forget to change the brush size and stroke, because I was in a hurry to just get them done, I didn't want to mess with them. I only changed the stroke and size of the brush on the tree sketch, which is the one I like the best. The koala bear was the first one I sketched, so it's not good. It looks like it has bangs which was suppose to be its darker fur or shadow. I traced all of these images.

Memory Portrait

So I hate doing portraits of people. They never turn out to look like who they're suppose to. So having to draw somebody from memory just this assignment terrifying for me. I decided to draw my best friend from back home in St. Louis, Stephania. This does not look like her, the only thing I got right was her blonde hair. Her head turned out smaller than her upper body and I made her hair look too heavy.

Animal Watercolor!

I decided that I really wanted to watercolor a peacock and an elephant, meaning no sleep...and I also found an adorable picture of the prettiest hummingbird ever. I free handed the peacock and elephant, but I traced the hummingbird on the light table in pencil first. I watercolored them first then added line art in black sharpie. I drew the baby elephant first, I wished I didn't center him and had made the grass better. I love the colors that I somehow mixed on the hummingbird. It took forever drawing in all those little feathers. The peacock was what I worked on last. There were a lot of lines for the background feathers that took so long to do. I was working on the feathers at around 2 or 3 in the morning before it was due, so I was kinda falling asleep during the whole process, so I could have turned out a little better :)

3 Line Art

We chose three out of the mound of small line art pieces to copy on the Lucy onto a 10 x 12.5 piece of illustration board. It took a while to get used to the Lucy, but tracing definitely makes the process so much faster. I think my house looks better, this time I kinda changed a few things like adding bricks like Rusty had requested. On the tree piece, I tried to make the tree more round by adding those curvy lines. I'm still having problems with my line strokes. I wished they were more natural, instead they always end up sloppy and blahh.

More Watercolor

These are my 10 Watercolor pieces of random stuff and incorporate line drawing in them as well. I actually enjoyed doing these. I think I am improving. I'm more patient and spending more time to actually make it look good and not like crap. I was eating McDonalds for dinner so I decided to paint it. Then I started painting vegetables, which I thought was kinda fun. I've realized that I like painting food. Then I just started painting random stuff in my room like an Ipod, a sandal, a necklace. I really like my apple, green pepper, and onion, they actually look pretty decent and resemble what they're suppose to be.

Soooo much Watercolor

These are my 10 Watercolor of Landscape pieces. I just painted whatever was near my apartment and the field behind C-Hall. I tried to find good parts around campus that had a nice sunset. But it's sooo hard to find good sunsets around Kirksville. So I kinda added more colors to the sunsets I painted. Mainly I started by painting a light blue base and wait for it to dry to start adding more color for the sky and then started adding green for trees and stuff. Waiting for it to dry is the hardest part.

These are my 10 Watercolor Architecture pieces. I don't like painting or drawing architecture. Next time, I should learn to use a ruler, because my straight lines suck. I do like the clock one that I painted, I think it actually does look like the clock tower outside of Pickler Library. The fountain was kinda a mess for me, drawing bricks is very difficult. I need to learn to use thinner lines, because all my lines turn out so thick and dark, which makes it very distracting and centers your attention on that one little part instead of seeing the piece as a whole.

Color Wheel

Watercolor color wheel. It reminds me of lollipops.

10 Sketches of People

One thing I hate is drawing faces, I am terrible at it if I don't spend a lot of time working on it. A quick sketch of somebody's face is very frustrating to do. So I just sketched backs or side profiles of people. I used a picture of me to sketch and took pictures of other people to sketch later on. I wish I was better with making contour lines, all my lines look like it's really heavy and drawn over and over again. I tried to do "stalker sketches" in the library, but there was nobody there during the day and I felt very awkward, so I just sketched people I knew like my roommate. I also found friends to sketch when I went to dinner at Colton's. I felt very awkward sketching at a restaurant.

10 Nature Sketches

Here we go again...10 more sketches but of nature.  I actually think that this was the easiest of all the sketches for me.  I just like sketching things in nature, like flowers and trees.  It's just difficult to get the details of the trunks of trees and the lines of a flower.  I really enjoy sketching landscapes, I find it easiest to think of it as not having to look perfect.  Unlike sketching people, where you have to get the proportions correct.  I am not looking forward to sketching people...