Acrylic / Watercolor Practice

I always wanted to try out painting with acrylic so I borrowed the acrylic set from my sister for a try-out. I realise it is a lot easier to control the application of colours in acrylic than watercolour (since less water is mixed, the paint do not spread out as much). However, I find it difficult to achieve the wash effect in watercolour so you will see patches of yellow in the following painting.

The boy with a sticker on his forehead

is my brother.

Charcoal Portrait

Charcoal on A3 paper

2011

This is a assignment piece I've done using charcoal last year. It depicts a side profile of my face. The excited facial expression (if you could tell) hints the presence of something beyond the paper. The rationale behind cropping the image into half and deleting about one quarter of it, is because I dislike the way I draw my lips. 

Colour Plan and Pen Prac

Colour plan

04 Apr 2012 

Colour pencil and pencil on paper

The first work is a color plan for my watercolor. I have chosen colour pencil as a medium for this because it is easier to control dry paper than wet ones and also because I would be able to identify the placement of each pigment more distinctively as compared to doing the color plan in watercolor.
The main colors used is turquoise, red and orange.

Pen Practice

02 Mar 2012

Pen on paper

The second portrait is done in pen. This is done to practice my shading skills in pen while maintaining a certain standard of aesthetic quality. I intended to portray something simple and yet defined. Overall, I should work on reducing the use of short, random lines and use longer, intuitive lines to strike a balance between the contours of the face and the facial details.

Vermeer's palette practice

I did the following portrait with 3 main pigments from the artist Johannes Vermeer's palette. As I happened to read through a watercolor book introducing color relationships and how the old masters apply them, I wanted to try out the palette used by Vermeer in most of his paintings and hopefully achieve similar outcomes. The three pigments I had limited myself to using is 1. Yellow Ochre 2.Burnt Umber and 3.Ultramarine. These three colours could be seen in abundance in the two paintings shown above.

Vermeer's palette practice

23 Dec 2011 

Watercolour on paper

I think the attempt was rather failed in terms of aesthetic qualities, but I do like the details of my neck to some extent. :P I have to work on the control of intensity and creating a colour plan to avoid putting too many layers (e.g. on the face), which is unfavorable in watercolors.

Watercolour practice

Watercolour Practice 1
27 June 2012 

Another out-of-the-blue day that I actually drew during ape lesson (shhh!) The first piece is a practice on wet-in-wet. I was hoping to achieve the same effect shown in this video (from 03:00 onwards) but I guess there's still a long way to go...

 

Watercolour Practice 2
27 June 2012 

The second and third pieces are both portrait practices based on photographs. The first portrait shows a pair of eyes spacing out and is dramatic in its choice of colour. Patches of blue and beige at the right hand side of this work are representational of the state of contemplation in contrast to the purple-peach skin surface. 

Watercolour Practice 3
27 June 2012 


In the second portrait, the subject is looking away from the viewer and showing a much lighter, dream-like colour scheme - pink, violet, orange, blue, turquoise, olive, and purple. The high transparency of the hair adds on to its illusionary and unsubstantial impression. Illusions can suppress fears and reality, but they will ultimately collide with the truth, against which they are dashed to pieces. Even so, I am glad to have found the unspoken part of me.

Thanks for reading!
p.s. can u tell which is my face? :D

Blue

18 April 2012, Watercolour on paper.

I was disheartened at the start of this week and some how it got worse on Wednesday :| Nevertheless, this strong sentiment actually drove me to complete the drawing within lesson time (yay!). Despite the unfitting facial expression in the photo (taken on 8 April), I thought it would be fine to just practice with watercolour so I did it.

I wanted to base my drawing on turquoise and orange initially but it didn't work out very well (as seen from my forehead). Eventually I completed the rest of my face in arbitrary ultramarine.

The eyes are terribly unpleasant in the drawing and my smile is unatural even in the photo itself (-_-;;) will work on drawing eyes next time... I wonder how these two will come together on my real face hahahah.

Doodle

Doodle

4 Jan 2012

Pen on paper

photo credit to Ashley

Some doodles I drew a few weeks ago; uploaded it so as to change my profile pic. hahaha

Pink and Yellow

This is my second try on self portrait. They are done in watercolour, a little smaller than B5. I was trying to express tolerance and serenity in this protrait. This is also drawn immediately after I thought through some problems that has being troubleing me (refer to the first portrait!).

The kind of mood I had then reminded me of Georgette Chen's portrait but I don't intend to look like her at all. lol.

Only two colours are used: Purple and Yellow Ochre
This complementary scheme is chosen to emphasise backlight  in warm yellow and maximise contrast. Purple is the dominant one applied both directly and in mixes with yellow.

Pink and Yellow

4 Jan 2012

Watercolor on Paper

This artwork is however not very successful as I felt that a lot more could have been done to increase the quality of this painting.

For example, the way I drew my hair could be enhanced so that it may look less dominant than the main subject which is the contrast in light on my neck. Background could also be more detailed and water colour techniques like wet-in-wet could have been implemented as well.

Self Portrait, Georgette Chen (1946)

Black

Black 

15 Dec 2011

Watercolor on paper

I was in a rather bad mood when I decided to complete the pencil drawing of my self portrait (#####-_-)

Stressed out because of AEP and some self-inflicted problems.

I should stop being overly sensitive.

I actually wanted to draw something dreamlike at first. Well, self-expression comes first.