Water Color, Day 1

Another set of ten, including a water color wheel and one of three practice examples (bee on flower). I'm sure more practice examples are sure to come. Water color is without a doubt a challenge. I kept in mind the four techniques and practiced all four plus one combination or favorite technique on each of two landscapes. My preference is for the dry on dry and wet on dry techniques because I felt more in control than when the pigment moves significantly after I apply it to the wet paper. The wet on wet and dry on wet techniques felt impossible to compose. I don't know if this is because of my unfamiliarity to this medium or my lack of patience to allow the wet layers to dry before continuing. I also notice that I treat water color like oil or acrylic in my application because they are more familiar to me than the fluidity and transparency of water color's layers. I will learn, this was a disappointing exercise but I did see improvement and I think I will continue to.

10 A Days, Day 5

Fifth day theme is people. I admittedly thought that I would do very well with this one because I usually prefer to draw people. I'm learning that skill at drawing people varies as much with medium and style as the  people being drawn vary in appearance. My plan of attach was to go to the library and draw people studying, I figured they'd be the most still in this environment. Apparently studying makes people anxious or something. Most people moved every few minutes so I found myself capable of getting gestural drawings to a moderate accuracy and some value in faces if I didn't focus on entire body proportions. I'm honestly not pleased with this set as much as the previous sets. That's all I have to say about that.

10 A Days, 4th Day

Day four's study is of natural subjects. I decided to work on my initial style of pen work using the three pen widths for the range of values. I also used solid line work on a few of the images because I thought the subject matter could be flattered by accentuating its lines more than its values. The sketches of thyme, sage and the outline of the calla lily are those examples (last three sketches pictured). I wish that I were getting cleaner and more controlled with the style I'm developing, but the lines tend seem expressive even when I do my best to pay close attention to line direction and spacing. I'm sure that is reflective of my personal desire for, and disgust of control. I can't live with it, can't live without it. I hope to be able to reach a point where I've mastered a personal style of mark making with pen and hopefully a few different styles that I can choose to express in a controlled fashion or not.