I've not had much time to work on my art this week; I've restarted Insanity so I've been going to bed early to give my body time to rest after the intense workouts. I did finally pick up the paper I think I'll get on with, but I only got it yesterday, and I've since been in Derby visiting family so I've had no time to do anything with the paper yet. I have done some work in Photoshop this week though while I've waited for the weekend to come around so I could buy the paper:
I can't show you the timelapse video for this; it took nearly an hour to render a video that was poor quality, so I'm not going to upload it to YouTube. I've also since broken my laptop, it still works for now, but I dropped it while it was plugged in, and I dropped it on the edge it was plugged it, so the case and ports in that area are cracked and bent out of shape. It does still charge (fortunately, but I'm now uploaded everything to the cloud incase the laptop gives up the ghost), but I'm worried when I try to fix it I may damage it more. Currently I can't shut the lid. I'll have to see how it goes. In other news, my long-awaited holiday is next weekend! I'm away for 2 weeks, so there won't be any blog posts. I will take a sketch pad on holiday with me, but the likelihood of me drawing anything is pretty slim, as I will be sunning myself round a pool drinking beer. So, as I don't have anything further to update, I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week before my laptop dies a death: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205811079/ I just think it's a very pretty piece, I love the colours and the concept of the peacock big cat.
I tried to paint Cersei with watercolour last week, and although I like the medium, I felt I couldn't get the detail in her face that I wanted, and from working the paper too much with colour and water the paper started to disintegrate:
So I've now had several types of paper so I can carry on with coloured pencil:
Original drawing from the previous timelapses, 150gsm acid-free drawing paper, 100gsm copier paper
So the paper on the left is the coarse paper I don't like, the middle paper is finer, and the paper on the right is copier paper, so smooth. I like the middle paper best, as I can get the right amount of colour on the paper without the texture showing through. On the copier paper, while it was smooth, I couldn't get the saturation right, and the more I worked it the paper started to disintergrate. The only trouble is, I don't have the paper I prefer in A3! So I need to wait until next weekend before I can start to draw, except I'm out next weekend, so even if I can get hold of the paper I want I won't be doing any drawing.
In other news, we had a Bank Holiday on Monday, and in the town I live in we have Charter Day, which marks when the town was founded. It's more for family and kids, so we usually give it a miss, but I had to buy groceries, so we had a wander into town. I went round a local art exhibition (same one I went to last year, although I think most of the artwork has rotated round), and also went to another place which is a local store and the Tourist Information in one (as they also had an art exhibition on). I've seen a summer course I'm going to sign up to, it's just a general art course for the school holidays (6 weeks), and it's working with oils, pastels, watercolour, tonal drawings, still life, etc. I'm not entirely sure I want to do it, but I'm hoping it will give me a purpose to my art.
I've also seen a university course I want to do, it's only a short course (10 weeks), and it's for graphic design. The guy that runs the course is a practising graphic designer, and I'm really keen to do this course, except it doesn't start until April 2017! Oh well, it'll give me plenty of time to save the money for the course.
Well, that's the most I've posted to my blog in the past few weeks, I hope you made it this far! As usual I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205709851/ I love the simiplicity of this watercolour, plus it's a rabbit, which I'm a sucker for.
I finished up my piece on Cersei Lannister in colour, I made 2 more timelapse videos:
I managed to stop the overall colour in the video changing too drastically (I shut the blinds, as the changeable British weather means the sun is always popping in and out of clouds), and I put the video camera on a different surface to the one I was working on, so it stopped the camera shaking too much. I love watching the timelapses back, as I think it's magical to see my work come back to life. However, I'm not happy with the finished result at all, the paper I used is too grainy, and you can see this in the stokes of my coloured pencils:
So, it's back to the drawing board (pun absolutely intended). I've started playing around with a cheap watercolour set I bought a while ago, and I think for the finish I'm after this is closer to what I want (smooth colour, not grainy colour). And this week's Pinterest of the week is totally relatable to my art woes, and my hope that watercolour may be the medium I use going forward: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/ATHZu9RGmfIFMG2fkvis1Uj0Z09U-DtL2X-uq8JCCIIgCtGvwzZeX1E/ maybe I should get some of these tools into my art arsenal!
