The Orange Moon

So this week in sketching class we were introduced to watercolor!!! I was definitly a little excited. We also practiced a variety of pen techniques and tonal value, which was very helpful. Although there are still some things that don't seem to be clear, but I am working on it. To start we did a series of tonal values with primary colors, red, blue and yellow for those that may not remember from elementray art class. Then we practiced different techniques for mixing water colors, which I really enjoyed. Although I am very pround of my skills when it comes to art, watercolor is something I have always struggled with. It is one of those things that requires patience, and that is a quality that I am severly lacking. The layering techniques that we used were mixed in the palete, wet on dry and wet on wet. The best results in my mind were the pre-mixed or the wet on dry. After our experimentation with color we took a step back and started to use grey scale. We were instructed to draw an orange. First in grey scale then in color. As I started to do my oranges my acrylic painting skills came into play and I try to make the tome blend from one to another all at once without letting anything dry. This technique did not work so well, my orange ended up looking like a moon, which i guess you could say is what I was going for, but it wasn't. My second attempt, still in grey scale was a little better, but still did not resemble an orange. I tried to layer my tones instead of blending while wet, because blending while wet seemed to rip up my paper and just got the entire drawing way to wet. My third try, which was color started to get better. I now layer correctly, but I needed to get the tones and the shadows on the orange correct. My last attemp finally looked like a recognizable orange. It took me the longest to do, but I layed everything one tone at a time, and once I put the second tone down it enevitably blended into the tone on the underside.

This week we also worked with Ink in an attempt to get better with toning in pen. We started with a series of lines at different weights and different techniques. The lines were then combined, some closer together and some farther apart to create and allusion of different tones. The third step is direction was added to the strokes of the lines, which added to the darkness of the tone. The more directions overlaping one another the darker the tone got.