Tag: Daniel Smith watercolours

Taran

My last few watercolours have been a complete disaster. I’m not sure why, I just seem to have been really struggling with technique, control, paper, everything. It goes that way sometimes. So it’s been a few weeks since I’ve opened my watercolour sketchbook. But today I painted this portrait and it came out so better than anything I’ve done recently and I’m so glad. I made plenty of mistakes, pilling the paper in a few places, but I’m still very happy with it. Hoping it means I’ve found my watercolour mojo again.

Ryan

This is Ryan from Sktchy painted in my Fabriano Venezia sketchbook with Daniel Smith and Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Kimiya

This is Kimiya from Sktchy and a straightforward watercolour and coloured pencil portrait in my Fabriano Venezia sketchbook.

Eric

I’m still struggling to find time to draw amidst a very hectic work schedule at the moment so any time with my sketchbook feels very precious. But I know the school holidays are coming and I always have a much quieter time once they’ve arrived so I’m looking forward to that. I don’t have kids in school but I work with health services and the summer holidays is always the least busy time of the year as meetings tend to fall away and/or get postponed until September. This also explains why June and July are so busy – everyone is trying to jam all their meetings in and tie up loose ends before the 6 week school holiday hiatus!

So in the midst of the meeting mania I was happy to spend a couple of hours drawing Eric’s awesome face. I didn’t quite capture his great expression completely- as usual it’s the mouth that isn’t quite right. But he was fun to draw and paint!

Nese

This is Nese from Sktchy. The paper in the Fabriano Venezia sketchbooks takes a lot of water but it does buckle slightly which means that it doesn’t lay flat on the scanner which is why the back of the image has that slight wavy halo effect – that’s the buckling. But the painting actually looks very beautiful on the paper; this is my favourite paper to work on with watercolour of all the sketchbooks I’ve tried so far.

Tony

This is Tony from Sktchy. I love the shadows across his face though I wish I had been braver and gone darker with my watercolour.

Jon

Straightforward watercolours and coloured pencils for this portrait of Jon from Sktchy today.

Amber

I’m in the middle of a 2-week hospital course prior to hopefully getting a spinal cord stimulator to help with my chronic neuropathic pain, so I’ve had no time at all to draw this week. So it’s been nice to get some time with my sketchbook today. This is Amber from Sktchy and I used both watercolours and coloured pencils for this portrait in my Fabriano Venezia sketchbook.

Bennett

This is Bennett from Sktchy. This portrait ended up looking rather stylised, more than I’d intended, and I’m not sure if I like it. I don’t think it’s any one element, it’s more a combination of the quite blocky hair, the overly lidded eyes and the too small mouth. I unintentionally exaggerated all these features just a little too much. Every portrait is a lesson.

Judith

This is Judith from Sktchy. Her skin is so pale I had to work very hard at getting those very light layers of skintone down without overworking them – I used a lot of water and the paper buckled even more than it usually does! And the. I had to go in with coloured pencils and add a little more shade (especially under the chin) than I usually would just to get a bit of definition but trying not to lose the ethereal quality of her very beautiful look. I think I just about pulled it off – but this is one I’d like to come back to in a year or so when my skills have progressed to see what I can do with it by then.