WWM #4: Family Fun

Today’s prompt of “Family Fun” opened an artistic can of worms for me.  I don’t draw or paint people very often – if at all.  So, if you are going to do a family, it seems to me you want to include human beings in the mix.  I thought of maybe a family of ducks out for a paddle, but that felt rather chicken!  So, here are my contributions.

This is based on a really cute photo of two little kids doing laundry together.  As a kid,  pretending to be a grown-up is fun.  

This one is also a bit outside my comfort zone – silhouettes of people.  They didn’t turn out too bad.  The dog was fun, too.  I liked the idea of dancing on the beach at sunset, playing with dog (who is dancing as well), and just having a wonderful time at the end of the day.

Family fun is about simple things – the things that bring people, related or not, together in memorable, pleasurable moments.  Enjoy those you have – go dance on the beach, play in the mud, and have a great time.

WWM #3: Picnic Food

The third prompt for #WorldWatercolorMonth!  Here, picnic food.  Bread, wine, cheese, fruit.  Sounds a lot more healthy than burgers and fries, and certainly more attractive to paint!  But, oh, what a challenge gouache is compared with watercolor.  I haven’t worked in opaque medium in years and years and years.  Personally, I don’t like the picnic basket, but the cheese, bread, wine, and (sorta) the fruit look okay.

I started with broad swaths of the major colors, such as the green, browns, blues, and laid in the underlying colors for the bread, cheese and apples.  From there I moved into less thin paint to thicker, working from the most distant (the grass) to the foreground.  At the end, I laid a thin wash of ultramarine blue to dissolve a bit of the underlying gouache to create shadows, knowing full well it would lift and blur the paint underneath it.

While I cannot say I love the painting – still lives are not things I pursue, preferring landscapes – I can say that it was definitely a worthwhile study.  Paint handling is getting a bit more intuitive and logical.  So different than watercolor – but at the same time comprehensible, if that makes any sense.  It’s really just understanding the logistics of the medium . . . And, I think I am improving (a bit) in using gouache, which is a good feeling.  I’m looking forward to the challenge of alternating transparent with opaque medium during #WorldWatercolorMonth.