And now the next unit of Juliette Crane’s Whimsical Animals! This one is Staying Loose: Covering What You Don’t Like, which was quite an informative lesson as we will see. For this, I painted a teddy bear! Something I am more familiar with, but I wanted to take it another step and apply the new techniques I am learning. Look how pretty she is, all dressed in a cute little smock, and those beautiful big green eyes!
Although we typically cover what we don’t like by layering with acrylic paint, Juliette demonstrated another method using oil sticks, something which is relatively new for me. And we got to use crayons too! How fun is that, as it takes me back to my childhood. Another point of this class was also to discover how we can effectively combine oil-based and water-based mediums such as watercolor. In the case of watercolor, oil sticks don’t necessarily cover up the mistake entirely like say Gesso on acrylic would do, but more like disperse the colors to create an intriguingly blended appearance because, unlike acrylic, watercolors dissolve. Bristol Paper was used in this lesson, perfect as due to its smooth thick surface, it doesn’t suck up the watercolor and let oil seep through. Who would have thought! I do have quite a few pads of Bristol paper waiting to be used more often.
A few scribbles of crayon on the Bristol paper certainly brought out the child in me! Once done, areas were filled in with watercolor, keeping in mind that you can’t cover up the oil-based crayon marks although it does give an interesting effect when they show through. Any areas we don’t like were subsequently layered over with oil sticks (oil pastels would do too) and hence the background. I also took the liberty of making some marks on it with a cocktail stick. Using a white oil stick like Shiva’s Antique White is a great way to blend the watercolors too as seen on the face. For any fine details, acrylic paint pens were used. And here are the art supplies used: I knew my box of crayons I got in Japan years ago would come handy one day! Prima watercolors by Art Philosophy in Tropicals were a good inexpensive set for this purpose. As for Oil sticks, I prefer Shiva to Sennelier as they are less messy to use and dry much quicker.
Yes and another fun session with Juliette Crane! Learned quite a lot in this one, especially about how oil sticks can help cover up mistakes. This lesson was also less intense and more free-style yet daunting as I am not accustomed to oil-based mediums. Nevertheless, it all went well in the end, and with more practice and usage, I look forward to using them in my work. And now, doesn’t my Teddy Bear look every so adorable?
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