Neophyte

whoa, I nearly fell off the Blaugust [band]wagon, which is a shame as I’m pretty sure I still have enough old art to post to get me through the month.

Here’s yet another picture of a squidkid! This was the first painting I did after purchasing some new white paints. When painting with watercolour, it’s generally advised to avoid using white paint. To maximise that magical watercolour look, an artist should aim to have white highlights represented by the white of the paper. The shoulder and arm highlights for example, are parts of this painting that I’m pleased about as those highlights were made by leaving the paper unpainted.

For small rim highlights I generally use a white gel pen, but the lines usually only come out at a certain width – I want to instead get lively looking highlights that integrate with the rest of the image. The paint I’ve used is Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bleed Proof White – it’s very good at blocking colours and is good at making lovely striking splatters.

I like the way I painted the forms of this face, but the anatomy freaks me out a bit. Also I “tidied” this scan on a monitor with bad contrast, I need to fix it up again. Once again, whites being troublesome!