15 minute challenge

Right - a bit of a comedy of errors this morning. I wanted to try out my new camera set up. Also, I wanted to act on a bit of advice - basically my videos are too long. So I thought that I'd set myself the challenge of making a sketch in 15 minutes or less. I selected a photo I took in Port Talbot, set up the camera, and what do you know, I managed it. Here's the picture: -

I competed it in 15 minutes flat. Joy of joys. However . . . I thought I'd switched the camera off and I hadn't, and it recorded 5 more minutes of absolute crap. SO that video was unusable. Or so I thought.

Take two. I picked a photo that I took in Prague: -

However this time I didn't finish the sketch in quite 15 minutes. If you'd like to see for yourself, here's the finished sketch: -

and here's the video. Watch it with the subtitles since the sound quality is awful.

Later on in the day, my daughter showed me how to cut my first video. So here it is: -

Watercolour and water effects

Well, I say water effect, but that goes for sky effects as well. I've been reading up and watching tutorials in the last couple of days, and I've tried to put what I think I've picked up into effect with this painting of a lighthouse: -

I can't lie, I'm quite pleased with this. The sky is even a little more subtle than it appears on this scan, and I'm pleased with the way that the sea has come out, and with the dolour combinations. It's almost completely just water colour, but I've use just a little white gouache in places.

Bus Project

Nothing ventured nothing gained. I wasn't happy with where I'd got to with the bus yesterday, so today I used layers of ordinary watercolour paint to darken it. Here's the finished version:-

I'm pleased with this. The colour of the bus in the foreground, especially the darker areas in the front are much better now, and draw the eye in the way that I hoped they would. I guess that this is now a mixed media painting since I've used watercolour on top of the gouache in some areas. There was a little more work to do on the background, and also the windows of the bus. It's maybe worth comparing this with where I was with it yesterday.

Bus Painting Project- Gouache

Old bus in East Grinstead

This is the painting I'm working on at the moment. I'm using gouache. Possible this may be a little bit ambitious since I've only just made my first few tentative steps with water colour as it is. Still, what the hell. I've still some work to do on the background on the right of the bus. as for the bus itself I quite like it, but I do think that the side panels are still too light, despite the fact that I've already applied two layers to them, and so may well have another go at darkening them.