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Ria Sharon

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Old Man and reflections from Carol Carter

October 4, 2020 by riasharon

 

old man with background

Experimented with metallic background and fixed shoulder

I followed along with Art Painting Workshop’s YouTube tutorial.

What a learned:

  • water control
  • Start with a strong drawing.
  • Keep my ink or pencil sketch handy as a reference if I get wobbly about the guide lines in the painting.
  • Keep track of my color mixes, label them on the palette.
  • Don’t try to “fix” too much. Just let it be and if I really hate it, adjust in the next painting otherwise it will look really overworked and scrubby.
  • Wet the areas I want to paint but don’t let the pigment get anywhere close to the waterline to avoid the hard edges completely.
  • Don’t apply a bunch of dark paint at once, layer it up to the final value.
  • Use the soft blending technique to control the spread of pigment within the wet areas.
  • Don’t use a hair dryer, just wait.
  • It takes the pressure off to think of every one as a study or a practice piece.
  • Don’t use the cello tape and be super careful with the masking tape at the end! This guy has some tips on how to prevent tearing.

What I liked:

  • intensity of color
  • range of values
  • modeling/dimensionality
  • structure held up during the process
  • the nose!

What I want to change:

  • mottling
  • overworked look that came from rewetting super pigmented areas and scrubbing out hard lines
  • I liked the plain white background better than the metallic and yellow ochre

 

watercolor of old man complete

Day 5: finished!

Day 4

old man stage 3

Day 3

What’ I’ve learned so far:

  • Glazing is everything! In the video, they work over the same area 10x. It really adds depth. Without the step-by-step demo, I wouldn’t have know how many layers there are in this. As it is, I probably went too dark too fast.
  • Lighting in portraiture is everything!
  • How the heck do you get the paper from drying immediately?!?!
  • It seems weird not to work up all the aspects of the composition concurrently. I’m not sure I would choose to do it that way on my own.

 

old man stage 2

Day 2: Really bummed I forgot to take a picture of the first wash

ink drawing of old man

Carol Carter’s thoughts on watercolor

Lots of great reflections in this interview with Carol Carter:

  • She does several paintings of the same subject before she gets one that is good enough to show.
  • Don’t do exercises. Always do finished paintings. Don’t go back and “fix” awkward parts. Do the painting again, from beginning to end. Learn from your mistakes. Do a progressive painting based on the former one. It’s not about making one painting perfect but a sequence of paintings. It’s not really about the product as much as the process.
  • You’ll develop your visual language over time, like 12 years! 🙂 It’s not magic. It’s just painting.
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Filed Under: DIY art school, portrait, watercolor

A little about me

I have an undergraduate degree in art. By day, I work in higher ed and in my free time I'm currently putting myself through DIY grad school.

I teach classes on creativity and inspiration on Skillshare. I occasionally share my original paintings on Etsy and fine art prints on Minted. I've also been known to make puppy portraits.

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