World Watercolor Month #11

A simple study of onions for today's watercolor practice. I used three colors - Azo yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine blue - for this study. 

Two things I learned is that 1) back side of Bockingford paper is not as absorbant or as responsive as the front side. 2) The arid, dry air in California makes drying times much shorter than I have experienced in Alabama for the past week. This makes working wet-in-wet challenging.

If you ask me honestly, I will say that I don't care for this painting. However, a while ago I resolved to not be disappointed in my art, because that is not productive. It is a lot more productive to pick out and appreciate the good parts, and learn from the bad. 

One thing I like about this painting is that it has good tonal composition. When I look at the painting from a distance it reads clearly, and that is a good thing. One thing that I would improve next time is to not use such saturated color all over. The painting looks busy and there is no relief to the eye.

May 4 : Onions in pastels

I looked for some still life reference photos on Paint My Photo, and I quite liked this one of the onions. This time around I took a couple of step by step pictures. The whole thing took me around 1.5 hr. I am still not sure how to make some good shadows without using black :-/

I blocked in some basic shapes with NuPastels.

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Then I switched to Rembrandt pastels for further blocking in. I like to work on the whole picture at once, so here is the next stage of the drawing about an hour in.

 

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I spent the next half hour clarifying the edges, deepening the shadows and adding a bit of color to the background.

 

Onions in pastels

Onions in pastels

I am not unhappy with this but I really would like to not use black! I need to figure this out.