Yet another painting whilst following the Keeping It Simple unit of Juliette Crane‘s Whimsical Animals online classes! This unit involves an 11-minute project during which we paint our animals with 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 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 having previously paint my Teddy Bear and Bunny Rabbit, I couldn’t resist this one final bonus piece. Not an animal this time but Little One! How could I not?
Choice of paper again was Strathmore’s A4-size Bristol Paper. I began by a random wash of Kremer’s Pigmente watercolor, chalk pastels, and watersoluble oil pastels (Neocolor II). This would be followed a rough sketch with black Stabilo pencil and smudging some Pan Pastel and fluorescent pink soft pastel for the face. Oil mediums like oil stick (Shiva) on watercolor and oil pastels (Jaxon) were further experimented with for its resistant effect on water-based mediums. See how cool the blue droplets turned out, looks like rain! And I love how the waxy yellow flower and petals pop out against the watercolor. Below illustrates the supplies used:
After a few good practice with my previous two, I felt somewhat more at ease painting this piece and getting more adventurous. Experimenting with combining oil and water based products worked rather well for instance. Although painting “simple” may sound easy, it also came with its challenges, since we get so hung up about getting it all perfect. This exercise though was more about loosening up and having fun and hence, any imperfections made Little One even cuter!
My Kawaii Quarter 