After researching about which medium I wanted to use for my latest illustration project, I finally bought the biggest set of watercolor crayons the art store offered. Making the financial investment came in a roundabout way.
I’d bought a plane ticket to go back east to attend an event, which was a financial sacrifice, but I’d just sucked it up and planned on using my credit card reward points. Then, thanks to Hurricane Florence, I cancelled all those plans, got a 100% refund, and felt free to use a fraction of that expenditure to buy the watercolor crayons.
Just the week before, I’d bought a TV tray, which was such an inexpensive convenience, I’m amazed I waited so long. Sometimes, I get so caught up with being miserly with my money that I go overboard. Yet, I’ve used this tray for so many different things already. An in-home temporary artist studio is the latest endeavor.Since I’m still fundamentally miserly to my soul, I haven’t invested in watercolor paper yet. The results will be even better once I do, but in the meantime, I’m getting a feel for the medium.
Once I finally got everything set up to try out the crayons, the sun had already gone down and my indoor lighting was very yellow, distorting the true colors. So, when I reached for what I thought was brown, turned out to be purple, especially once I painted over it with water. I was less concerned about the computer paper wrinkling since I knew I’d not use it for my final product.For the second painting, I colored more with blending and contouring in mind, but I was still distracted by how “off” the skin coloring looked. Moreover, I went to a dark place where I felt that I’d wasted my money buying such a large set of crayons that didn’t have any browns. Lots of greens, blues, oranges, purples, yellows, pinks and no red.
As I looked dismally at the 84 collection of “useless” crayon colors, I noticed that the colors on the lid didn’t match the colors in the box, which I couldn’t have known since the box was completely wrapped in plastic when I bought it. I entertained thoughts of getting a refund when a more enlightened thought visited.
I grabbed my laptop and researched which two colors mixed together to make brown. I struck gold! Purple and yellow make brown. Blue and orange make brown. Red and green make brown, even though I have no red. I could hack a reddish color combining magenta with yellow. Or just buy a red watercolor crayon.
Nonetheless, with my creative energy returned, I traced out my third painting.This was purely an experiment to see the different types of browns I could get with one yellow crayon combined with five of the purple crayons. I quickly colored all the characters with the one yellow. Then went on top of it with a different shade of purple. Lastly, I painted over the coloring with some water. I wasn’t concerned about technique since I only had to prove to myself that I hadn’t wasted my money.
I was too tired to try out the purples with other yellows, but at least I’ve worked around that session’s mental block right out of the gates. I’ve got far more possibilities than I originally thought. The best part is that I have so many combinations to play with that all I need to do is carve out enough time during the weekend in to do so.