It’s been fun to combine oil painting with watercolor lately. Both are quite different for me. For painting in watercolors, it really feels more like drawing and then brushing water into the drawing. Oil painting feels like setting down areas of color and shaping them.
I shopped around for a bit and then finally decided on these paints: Sakura Koi 24 Assorted Watercolors Field Sketch Set because I did want to take the set outside on my hikes, and the size and color range seemed perfect for what I am hoping to do. With 24 colors, there aren’t too many or too few colors to choose from. In the photo above I have the 18 color set and a 12 color set shown, so 24 is the right happy medium, I think. Here is the 18 color set:
I made the above self-portrait as a test and it worked out great. It was a pretty traditional watercolor approach where I made the drawing of my face and laid on the light colors first.
The paper used for this drawing is Traveler’s Notebook watercolor paper. To get the paper to lie as flat as possible I pinned it down with a lamp and a crayon container. I did have the pink/light magenta gouache on my palette but I don’t think I used it for this.
I’ve also been enjoying using watercolors to make portraits of my toddler. He’s at a really cute age right now. Everything he does is adorable and magical to me. I’m working to capture his face in the best way that I can.
Painting or drawing kids is always an interesting artistic task because they have such round faces compared to adults. There are some adults who keep kid-like faces throughout their lives but many of us grow out of or into a different face. At times, to me, it’s almost like I might as well be painting a cat instead of a human, that’s how different painting a baby versus painting an adult is to me. Maybe it’s not this way for other artists though. I think it would be interesting if there were an art school out there where students spent a whole semester on painting the very young. It also wouldn’t be bad to have weeks of classes dedicated to other singular topics, like plants or fabrics. I’m sure there’s curriculums out there that exist like this, but I haven’t seen them.