May not look like much to others, but with this painting, I stumbled onto subtle blending–except for his hands. There’s usually an area or two where I just concede that the effort has defeated me. For this painting, it’s definitely the hands. The hands are so bad, one may not even notice the lips aren’t that great either.
But I love the blending everywhere else. Up until this point, I thought that I had to first color the shading and contouring, then merely paint to blend those colors with water. What I realized through trial and a lot of error, was, unlike painting with oils, watercolors must be layered to produce the desired effect. The blending technique I use with oils just muddy watercolors.
I’m sure I could have watched even more YouTube videos about painting with watercolor crayons, but it’s been a wonderful journey to put all this together. I even recently bought a refurbished monitor that didn’t come with a stand, so I could lay it flat in my lap while it’s hooked up to the laptop, projecting the image that I’m tracing onto tracing paper. Genius!
I finally found a workaround to my lack of drawing skill. Now, I’m practicing to become more respectful of the medium. I’m not looking for mastery, which means with every improvement, I’m going to be ever so happy. No matter how small the gain.
I have 16 pages of drawing paper before I switch to actual watercolor paper. From there, the remaining rough drafts will be completed on watercolor paper. By then, I expect to up my game even more since a better quality of paper will look better.