Another fantastic class from Ana Victoria Calderón. Her Watercolor Textures class on Skillshare introduced me to painting textures and patterns with watercolor, something that hadn’t occurred to me before.
She demonstrates how to get started making texture swatches and choosing a color palette before moving on to a final project. The texture stage was addicting for me! I kept discovering new things to paint that might work with the concept I had in mind — a scene from the Redwood Forest where we had our summer vacation.
Before I painted my actual swatches, I testing out some ideas
Once I had some ideas sketched out, I started painting my swatches. It was a lot of fun to pay with different strokes and colors. For this project I liked the more organic textures. Some of the others turned out too stiff or structured.
Before sketching my idea onto watercolor paper, I did some thumbnails in my sketchbook. The large sketch was close, but the main focus (the owl) was too centered. The upper right sketch was my final version.
My color palette of primarily neutrals:
My final project took so long for me to complete! I actually enjoyed the process of painting the texture swatches more than the final artwork.
With this project, I started to see that I like the process part of art more than the final artwork itself. Which was a little frustrating…until I discovered art journaling and urban sketching! Since I’m not interested in hangable “fine art”, embracing my sketchbook as my playground is a relief.
LINKS
- Skillshare class Watercolor Textures
- My Skillshare project
