All Watercolors All The Time!!

So it's the third week of Sketchbook Skool and I'm trying to keep up the suggestions from each week. Not only that, I guess I'm trying to continue to do the homework for each week again and again, even as I move onto another week. Like I'm keeping up my journal of my life, just randomly adding stuff to it daily like Danny suggested. I'm also trying to be less critical with myself, letting myself enjoy the process even if I make mistakes like Koosje was trying to teach us. She gave me a great quote that I've written down in my art quote book. She said...

"Step out of your comfort zone to make it bigger." 

She also made it clear that what other people think of your work is none of your business. I'd never thought of it that way. What other people have running around in their heads, even if it's about me AND it's bad, is still none of my business! Besides, it's my sketchbook after all, I shouldn't care about what other people think about it, and it shouldn't be perfect either, that would be just weird.

Holbein colors I own.

So this week with Prashant Miranda we're learning all about watercolor paints. This is the lesson I was waiting for. I not only hoped that this six weeks would prompt me to continue to keep a sketchbook for my own pleasure but also I was so hoping I'd get some gem of an idea or a small spark of understanding about watercolors and how to learn them successfully. I feel so breathlessly lucky that I got that spark. 

I have been white knuckling it every time I paint with watercolors, I couldn't find the core or some basic understanding that would start me off on how to learn watercolors. They're really complicated but I  figured I must have missed the memo as I struggled to paint with them. I knew there was something basic i was missing.

Travel Palette colors + Neocolor II

Well, I can't even explain what that basic thing was that I learned from Prash. But something "clicked" when I watched his video about the basics of watercolors. I now know what I have to do and where to start. In fact, I already did. I documented all the colors and kinds of watercolor paints I have. The next step is to explore basic color mixing and how each color moves in water and on paper. Like, how many greens can I make mixing  just two colors together? What colors do I get? Document all that. Start again with blues. I know, simple, huh? And yes, it'll be a lot of work, probably a whole sketchbook full of paint blotches. But by the end I'll understand the basics of how watercolors "work". I'm actually looking forward to the boring parts! LOL.

I hunted down a travel palette I had gotten as a present several years ago but hadn't used. I was too afraid to go do Plein Air painting, lol. Now I'm using it as a basic palette to start learning from. As you can see, I have a huge number of artist quality Holbein watercolors, I think there were 32 colors there. I'll get to those next but I'm gonna do the basics on the basic paints first. 

Lastly, I took advantage of the Moo.com sale and ordered me some postcards with my artwork on them. Great deal and I couldn't resist. I had done business cards several times but never a postcard or greeting card or anything like that. I can't wait 'till they get here!! (I'll try to remember to show you them when they arrive. It'll be a show and tell day.)

Ooh, one last Lastly, LOL. Prash has the coolest personal logo and he's inspired me to come up with my own. I'm working on it and will post when I am finally happy with it. :o)

Best,

If you're looking for this week's APR just click here.

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