Watercolor Pencils

Hello everyone,

I am super duper happy today. Yesterday sweet sister Erica sent some presents from South Korea. She is working as an English teacher there.

Two presents were related to flower arrangements. One is a notebook and other is a fan. Flowers were pressed.

I used some tacky glue and arranged them the way I wanted. Here they are;

After completing these, I jumped over my new watercolor pencils. I was so excited to try them that I used the same outline paper I used for my previous watercolor work which is balloon flower. It turned out meh…

Watercolor pencils_Balloon flower

The above picture is on Strathmore Watercolor paper, acid free, Cold press, 140 lb (300 g). The surface of the paper is not the greatest for a smooth painting.

What is magical about watercolor pencils is, they both work as pencil and watercolor (The name is watercolor pencil, daa!). You color your drawing with pencils first and then use a brush by dipping it into a little bit of water and go over the pencil painted area. They smoothly move on the paper and spread on a big area.

I learned that, as we were waiting for one layer to dry in watercolor to apply the other layer, you should wait for watercolor pencils to dry too. Otherwise, when you try to paint over the wet area, it leaves scribbles. If you don’t push too hard on wet areas, you’ll be fine though. Good news is, wet area dries so quickly.

Today I was looking for another thing to paint and try my new, lovely pencils more. I was looking through my watercolor notebooks, then I saw my unfinished, ugly Hibiscus. Do you remember it from my previous posts?  Click here;

https://tulayyilmazbotanicalart.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/line-drawing-assignment_4th-and-5th-product/

A few weeks after writing that post, I worked on that drawing with colored pencils just to complete it. It didn’t turn out great either. Therefore, I left it again. It seems today was the day to complete it nicely. If I need to remind you the paper for that piece, it is Strathmore, mixed media paper, vellum surface, acid free, wet and dry media, 140 lb (300 g). This paper works perfect for watercolor pencils. Let me show you the transition;

Hibiscus_Transition from colored pencils to watercolor pencils

Isn’t it nice how smooth it gets by the touch of watercolor pencils?

And here the final product;

Hibiscus_Mixed media_Watercolor, colored pencils, watercolor pencils

I am so happy with the end product. The colors turned out so vibrant. I can’t wait to try another flower with these new colors. (LOVE YOU ERICA!)

There are things I want to say about watercolor pencils, but I don’t want this post get any longer. Wait for my next post for advantages and disadvantages of this media.

Have a nice day guys!

 

 

 

Late Night Doodling

Hello everyone,

Yesterday, on the way back home, I found a fruit of a Rosaceae family member which was looking pretty cute.  I and Paul (the love of my life) collect little fruits or seeds of the plants and put them in a jar; they look super cute and also help us get familiar with the Texas vegetation.  I was thinking this one will be nice for the collection and also I could paint it. It was small enough that would help to wake my sleeping motivation up and help me be more productive. I don’t know why but my motivation to paint something is zero on these days. Some botanical artists claim that you don’t need motivation to paint; all you need is start painting. Anna Mason is one of them. (I love her work by the way.)

What she says may be true for people who are already painting professionally and know all the techniques, tricks and have the right equipment that would enable them to have a smooth painting process.  For me, I need to be willing to sit and paint something; otherwise I just ruin some parts of the picture and don’t even bother to fix them.

Last night, I wasn’t in the mood to paint again but forced myself to draw the fruit I found. I did it with colored pencils and this is how it looked at the end.

Rosaceae Fruit_Colored Pencil

When I took the photo and checked it on the computer, I saw the colors didn’t blend that well on the paper. It was looking okay on my paper, but here on the screen it doesn’t look that great. Maybe this can be a way to look at the details on your drawing and fix the problems on your paper. I assume with a different type of paper and colored pencils with more pointy ends, it would be easier to fill the gaps and blend the colors better. The use of a magnifier would also help to see those gaps on your paper too.

Seeds and Fruits_Colored Pencil

After I finished the fruit, it looked so lonely on the paper. I decided to choose some other fruits and seeds from my jar and draw them. The red one is Mountain Laurel seed. They are so red and beautiful. We have another jar filled with only with these seeds. I don’t know why but I drew the red seed and the yellow fruit, black and white at the beginning, then I colored them. That’s why that yellow fruit looks unnecessarily shadowed (:

I need to find a better way to take pictures of my paintings. One photo doesn’t look like the other even I take them at the same place and at the same time; the light keeps changing.  If you have any suggestions I would love to hear.  Another thing I need to learn is how to use Adobe Photoshop.  I am not in favor of changing the colors of my painting on Photoshop, I think it kills the originality of a hand-made product but cleaning the dirt from the surrounding of the painting would be nice.

Have a lovely summer day!

Alignment Assignment_Fourth Product

Hello everyone,

I feel terribly guilty that I didn’t complete the assignment on time. I’m not planning to list my excuses why I didn’t complete but I should mention that I’m really sorry. It seems setting certain time periods won’t work for me. Future assignments won’t be restricted by time. I was hoping doing this would push me to draw every day, but … You know what happened

Anyways, last night I have finished another piece which I am really happy about. I picked a really lovely Magnolia photo. I drew it by looking at it as I did on the previous ones of this assignment which took plenty of time. When I was confident about all parts looked set, I started coloring it with colored pencils again.

Colored pencil is a really nice media; I am having so much fun while coloring with them. I don’t have a professional set of colored pencils. I am still using little brother Ryan’s Crayola 24 pieces colored pencils. Since I am not completely into colored pencil use, I am not planning to buy a whole professional set yet. Maybe in the future!

While I was drawing and coloring last night, my background music was Coldplay Live 2012 album which is pretty amazing. I would suggest you to try to listen while painting. Princess of China is my favorite.

Here is my final product:

Magnolia bloom_2nd Assignment_4th Product_Tulay Yilmaz

It was a hard piece, there are some little parts that still didn’t really align with the original photo but I am satisfied with it.

Hope you like it! Now there is one more left to complete the assignment. I will try to release it as quick as possible. Then I’ll write why this assignment is helpful. Thank you for your patience.

Have a great day!

Alignment Assignment_Third Product

Hello everyone,

I have just completed my third product. It took my half day but it looked really nice at the end.

I am aware today was our last day to complete the assignment but I had a busy week, I couldn’t spend enough time drawing and I didn’t anticipate that this assignment will be this hard and time consuming. Therefore I am giving one more week to complete two new products. I am sorry for being lazy. I’ll try to make it up.

I picked Digitalis purpurea  this time. I accidentally found the picture  online and I fell in love with it. Original of the picture was painted by Arthur Harry Church (1865-1937).  If I need to describe his work with one word, it is AMAZING! They are so delicate, so accurate and so beautiful. I encourage you check him online to see his great paintings.

My drawing went so well today. Normally I don’t use guidelines that much when I start drawing but this time I did lines, I drew a frame, I did circles to arrange the places of the different parts, I kept my lines really faint and etc. This is an improvement for me because I normally start from one point and build up slowly which was always ending up with a good looking picture but not a totally accurate one.

This time, different than the other two products of this assignment, I didn’t fix the non-matching lines. I pushed myself hard to catch the accuracy as much as possible. I completed the whole picture, colored it and then compared it with the original copy. You can see below how it looked at the end.

Matching lines with the copy of original painting

When I was done, I colored it with colored pencil again and tadaaaa…

Digitalis purpurea_Reproduction_Colored pencil_2nd Assignment 3rd Product

What do you think? Is it looking good?

 

 

Alignment Assignment_Second Product

Hello everyone,

My second piece is ready. I didn’t expect this exercise will be this much time consuming but it is.

I have picked Papaver somniferum this time. It was hard and confusing. I still have the tendency to draw the things bigger than normal. The angle also ended up being different than the original. Instead of changing the angle of the pieces, I only focused on their sizes this time. Therefore, my final picture is slightly different than the original one.

Matching and unmatching lines and more

As you can see above, it was like a mind game. It wasn’t the best idea to draw all the lines on the same sheet, even being in different colors didn’t really help. Next time I’ll try to make it less confusing both for you and for myself.

After a few hours and with the help of little brother Ryan’s colored pencils, I finished my piece.

Papaver somniferum_Reproduction_Colored pencil_2nd Assignment 2nd Product

Since the angle changed, the top of the leaf remained hidden behind the flower. I am happy with it so far. I only wish I didn’t use Strathmore Drawing paper for this. Its texture was not the best for colored pencils. I need something smooth. I will use mixed media, vellum surface next time.

I am learning a lot during the process. I highly recommend you to try this exercise. Please leave your comments, suggestions… See you on the next one!

Alignment Assignment_First Product

Hello everyone,

I have completed my first product from our second assignment on a boring, gray, rainy day of San Antonio.

I should admit that I had questions in my mind how this exercise would really help me to improve my drawing but today I realized it definitely helps. I will gather all the benefits and publish them as another post at the end of this assignment.

I picked Tulipa sylvestris for my first drawing. I pasted it to a word file, and resized the picture. Trick is holding ‘Ctrl’ button while resizing not to distort the picture.

Then I started drawing the flower on my paper only by looking. I didn’t use any ruler, protractor, or anything else. I was pretty confident while drawing. It was looking nice and correct. When I was done, I copied my picture to a trace paper and put it above the print to see how my lines were aligned.

Matched and unmatched lines

As you can see on the picture above, black lines are my drawing. Red lines are the ones which don’t match with the original picture and blue ones are the matching ones. Not much, right? And besides my Tulip turned out chubbier than the original one and its leaf was way off from where it was supposed to be.

I put the trace paper to my side to guide me. I deleted my wrong lines and fixed them section by section on my paper. When I was done, I put the trace paper over it again just to see the end result. It wasn’t perfectly aligned still but it was good enough. Then I found myself coloring it with dry pencils. It wasn’t planned, and the colored pencils were not the best kind either but at the end it looked simply pretty. Here is the result;

Tulipa sylvestris-Reproduction-Colored pencil-2nd Assignment 1st Product

Hope you liked it. I encourage all of you to try and share them with me.

Stay tuned for the next one!