Tea wrote:Oooo! Watercolors! Actually, I'm currently taking a watercolor class and I think I'm falling in love with the medium myself, but, that aside, I've noticed that watercolor in general has some really beautiful brush strokes and it appears you, of course, are no exception. The second one in particular I get the impression that every stroke is intentional, especially since it's a simpler piece and there really isn't a lot of detail to distract from the shapes you're using to evoke 'tree'.
Also, seconding Mr. Creepy-Reaper up there, that one looks like it was really fun to paint.
And on another note, here's a somewhat tangential question: I've noticed you're always putting up really nice pictures of your works, are you doing something with lighting or something? Perhaps you have some secret trick for not having to Photoshop the hell out of them in order to get the images to be presentable?
The tree paintings were actually practice pieces from my painting class from exactly a year ago. They were kind of a reflection of the croquis drawings we always did before we began our actual painting.
We were outside that day and our teacher asked us to paint trees as quickly as possible, keeping it simple yet trying to keep the feeling of a tree in the paintings. It was fun as hell.
As for the lighting, I don't really conciously do anything to improve the lighting afterwards. If the piece I'm working on is digital, I might tweek the contrast or color balance a bit if needed.
Maybe a little gradient here and there to emphasize the light sources.
I've only recently started paying attention to proper lighting in my artwork and I keep doing these very heavily contrasted pictures with delicously thick shadows.
Playing with shadows is especially fun when you're working with watercolors, though if you're sloppy like me the shadows may get out of control.
I unfortunately do tend to get the shakes when I'm painting so they sometimes get out of control.
If you meant these watercolor pieces, I have no clue. It might just be my scanner doing something to the contrast and color balance. (My scanner is pretty old at this point. 2004 I think)
I'll have to get a new one at some point, but it's still serving it's purpose.
Incidentally, I did a small watercolor piece over the last two days after putting the previous ones up.
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Here's a good example of how my scanner changes things. The actualy painting is much more muted on the colors.
The scanner made things brighter and I actually like it. The only thing I'll have to keep in mind in the future is that I shouldn't do the black outlines first.
They get smudged by the water and the other colors, making things look a bit dirty in places. I might do more watercolor stuff since I've already got the tools out.
