Stuck During Spring

Last weekend we changed our clocks forward to Summer Time. That normally makes us all excited that Spring is here with warmer and longer days ahead. Unfortunately I’m not that as enthusiastic this year. We are still cooped up at home with the COVID-19 outbreak and can’t go out much to enjoy outdoors as we have done before. Nevertheless, this gives me more the reason to paint as a healthily creative outlet for frustrating times. It also gives me another excuse for a bit of retail therapy: new art supples!

New Watercolors

One of the webshops I have been ordering stuff from had a “stay at home” discount on items and I jumped at the opportunity. There I ordered a few Holbein products which I couldn’t find at the art store in Japan, including sets of watercolors and gouache. I normally go for pans rather than tubes when using watercolors but the extensive and beautiful color range was too much for me to resist. When the stuff arrived I enthusiastically put them to the test on my Strathmore Visual Journal for Watercolors. For this piece, I stuck to the primary colours of red, yellow and blue and paintedsome random but simple shapes of circles, triangles and flowers. I must say I was quite impressed! A little dot from the tube goes a long way, and any excess left on the dish can be used another time.

Practice with Gouache

Another item I bought was a set of Acryla Gouache also by Holbein. I already have a smaller set of them and have in the past used them. Unfortunately I don’t get much chance to do so often because I tend to focus more on acrylic. I should really use them more though because they’re wonderful; colours are so vivid and strong with a velvety matt finish. Such was further confirmed when I attended the Paint Mojo workshop in Cambodia where we were introduced to the Acryla gouache and they worked so well with Mixed Media work including acrylic ink. Here was thus a good chance to try it out, in combination with watercolors. Another beauty of gouache is that they dry quickly and once dry can be worked on in layers as colours don’t move. For this piece, I focused on secondary shades of orange, green and violet and used each alongside their corresponding complementary colours.

Adding Kawaii

The result looks very pretty but I felt more could be added. Hence more Gouache for more vibes and as such went back to the primary colours of yellow and blue but skipped red as it could be overwhelming. With a strong presence of red already, I instead doodled in some little flower shapes and of course included Little One with my white Molotow acrylic marker. Around the painting the marker was also used in random areas. The bunny and smiley face were also drawn in. Not wanting to distract the original watercolour and gouache painting, I stopped as soon as I felt enough details were added. And now I think we’ve got a simple but vividly colourful painting here!

I enjoyed experimenting with my new products and creating this pretty piece. Moreover, I found it helped me deal with the home-isolation more by imagining about Springtime and to paint about it. These new paints will definitely be used more often as I’m very happy with the outcome, And now that I’ve got more time for that, I shall make most of it!