Sunday, June 26, 2011

Flowers - Watercolor/Pen and Ink

I have to say that tonight was not one of my better nights and I know each of us do run into that from time to time.  There are going to be times that no matter what we do, we're not going to be satisfied or we find ourselves feeling really disappointed in our results for whatever reason.  Tonight's my night.

Multi-petal flowers are extremely difficult for me.  I've yet to figure out what it is about them that intimidates me as they do.  I may do OK drawing them but when it comes time to render in paint, that's another story.

Purples or violets are THE most difficult color for me to get right.  I seldom like violets that "I" personally mix.  Normally they are dingy looking to my own eyes.  Even following the guidelines of mixing the right blues with the right reds with warm or cool bias doesn't seem to make a difference for me.  I should probably create a chart of nothing but violets but I've done that before and doesn't seem to make a difference.  Although I don't think I've tried creating a color mixing chart with my Daniel Smith pigments.  Most of my charts are Winsor and Newton.

And reds............hmmmm...........that's another tough one for me.  I'll have a color red in mind but I seldom achieve or pick the right one that I was hoping for.

So if I sound a bit negative with this post....................It's just one of those nights and I know we ALL have them  ;-)

3 comments:

Sandy Sandy Art said...

I think these little spots are quite nice Susan. Were you using the gouache for these? Different mediums and manufacturer's paint colors react in their own way. I mainly stick with one medium (transparent watercolor) and one manufacturer (DaVinci) to avoid frustration and confusion when mixing pigments. For me it has become second nature. Perhaps you are using the wrong blue or red when mixing your violets. If you use the blue with yellow in it or the red with yellow in it (yellow is the compliment of violet) it will grey it down.
Don't be so hard on yourself . . . It's the process, not the result that is important here. I think you are doing great! I have seen lots of growth in the past month!!

Susan Bronsak said...

These are using Daniel Smith Artist's watercolors. No gouache this time. Basically wet on dry this time around to get the deep saturation.

I started out years ago as a W&N fan but discovered Daniel Smith and fell in love with their pigments. I also like Holbein and Mairiblu (can't remember the spelling) pigments but don't like how they dry in wells. So I stick with the Daniel Smith.

As for the blue/red combo....I thought I was using the two with the same bias. I'm working on color charts with my blues and reds I use most often. We'll see how those turn out. Plus I was using artificial light last night and this morning the results look totally different in the natural light. I've always painted by artificial light and never paid much attention to that but here where I'm living, we have a lot of natural light coming in and I'm only now discovering there IS quite a difference in looks. The scanner can't quite pick up the true color or maybe it's my monitor. Hard to say.

Thank you too......I appreciate the encouragement.

:-)

Susan Bronsak said...

The marigold still needs work no matter the lighting.......lol