Keep It Simple: Teddy Bear

Still following and thoroughly enjoying Juliette Crane‘s Whimsical Animals classes on line. And so much fun learning more! This next unit is Keeping it Simple, an 11-minute project during which we paint our animals using a variety of mediums. Key here is, for a change, no layering; just keep it, as per the title, simple! For this unit, I created a few more paintings because I felt I needed, firstly more practice and secondly more time to loosen up before continuing with the next project. Plus I was having so much fun with it! And for this first one, I came up with this cute little teddy bear with a crown on his head. So sweet!

Painting was done on Strathmore’s A4-size Bristol Paper. I began by a random wash of Kremer’s Pigmente watercolor and although Juliette went for chalk pastels, I opted for Derwent’s Inktense instead. This would be followed a rough sketch of my character with black Stabilo pencil. Teddy Bear was the first that came to mind, as a change from my usual cats, For the face some brown Pan Pastel was smudged on and for the rest, I chose to color with Molotow acrylic pens and oil paint sticks. I even took to the liberty of embellishing the painting with some sparkles too! Below illustrates the supplies used:

Very pleased how my Teddy Bear turned out! Loving the muted tones too which is not what I usually go for. Although painting simple sounds easy, it came with its challenges as well. Painting without layers means that mistakes or any parts you don’t like would be difficult to hide especially with watercolor. The point of this lesson though is to be simple rather than perfect, to loosen up and not be too hung up about getting it all correct. In fact, I think my Teddy Bear looks even more adorable like this!