It’s too bad- I really liked the pencils for this, but I pretty much lost control of it as soon as I started to apply the color. I had really gotten used to the way I was doing the inks, and watercolor is just not going to behave the same way.

Well, whatever. It was actually kind of freeing to just mess with it without worrying about ruining the painting after I had already ruined it.  This one, I think, didn’t really stand a chance of turning out well- I started working on it pretty late at night, for one thing. For another thing I don’t have the slightest idea how to paint iridescent feathers with watercolor.

However, I’ve noticed that I’m finding ways to avoid sitting down to start another after I finish one, especially if it turned out well. I had been wanting to do a bird all day (look at my Twitter for Sunday to see how early I intended to start working on this), so by 10:30 at night I sat down and said “Damnit, I’m going to do a bird, and I give myself permission to do it badly if I have to!”

And I did. But at least I sat down and did it! And now I’m clearer about a few of the issues I’ll have when I come to do colorful, iridescent birds again.

Tags: art, being blocked, birds, painting, rufous hummingbird, watercolor, works in progress

For the uninitiated, scratchboard is an art technique that is reductive- you start with a board that has two layers, and scratch the top layer to reveal the bottom. Little kids do this a lot with crayons, and the effect is cool. The grown-up version is also cool, but I like the digital version the best. Basically you make a brightly-colored gradient on one layer, fill with black on the layer above, and then use your eraser/pen combo on your tablet to render your subject (you’re using your eraser as your primary tool in this case. It’s reductive!). It’s more forgiving that way.

Is anybody interested in a tutorial? I think I’m going to make a tutorial of what is a really fun computer drawing technique.

And actually? I lied about not promoing a t shirt in this post. The merchandise for this design looks awesome.

Tags: aquatic, art, art technique, Friday Fish, ocean, scratchboard, sea life, sea turtle, t shirts

Snark aside, I really like using applications like Kuler to pick themes and schemes and Make Stuff Go Together, so rather than step on my sister’s toes and be all “ooh! ooh! you should do this! or this!” which will invariably piss her off (cause, I mean, really, wouldn’t it piss you off if your design-oriented sister was always up in your design kool-aid uninvited?), I’ve spent the better part of the afternoon playing around over there, making a bunch of non-public schemes, including one that colored those cupcakes. I know, by now Kuler is kind of old news, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to play with.

Tags: kuler