Doodling Faces
I did something similar to this during a sketchbook challenge earlier in the year. I thought it was fun, so when I had some leftover paint on my palette, I decided to try it again.
I start by painting rows of hair and face shapes, with a few animal faces thrown in for good measure. When it’s all dry, you go back over them with as much or as little detail as you like. I used just an ink pen, but you could add more watercolor, color pencil, marker, or whatever else you prefer.
It’s fun to see the variety of cartoony faces you can come up with by using features in different combinations. I like to try a broad range of facial expressions and styles, though sometimes mine get a little repetitive or lazy. I find it hard to stop until they’re all filled in!
It was so much fun I decided to do it again, using leftover smudges on the palette—but this time I made them all cats. I restricted myself to the colors on the ceramic palette, so it was mostly green, with a little yellow and orangey red to mix up and use.
Some of those cats look kind of creepy, and I almost feel bad for making the sad ones look sad…
Not as Bad as I Thought...
After searching for images of negative watercolor painting (mentioned last time), I followed one of the pretty pictures to this tutorial. I thought I’d simplify it and give it a try with that background I shared before—the one with more muted colors and some salt texture.
I didn’t really read the tutorial that closely, though, and didn’t watch the video. I just wanted to get into the process of painting. I’ll need to revisit the tutorial (and actually pay attention this time) if I want to emulate that style, because my initial results were decidedly “meh”.
At first, It though of just leaving it be and maybe using that page for collage paper. Instead, I gave it one more chance, using my own version of this technique. I got out a pen, sketched everything, then went back and painted in a layers, gradually going darker (and with more layers) over the areas that should be further in the distance. I didn’t try to blend anything.
This is only cellulose watercolor paper, so it can only take so much water/layers before it begins to disintegrate, but I thought this help up pretty well. I’d like to try something similar again using 100% cotton, but this still turned out much better than I originally thought it could, based on the first try. My sketching’s not great, but… Eh, it’s fine. This is only for my own amusement, after all, and was intended as a relatively quick and easy test run for that other technique. It wasn’t a success for that method, but this may turn out to be the better option for me, anyway.
Fairy Mushroom Village Doodles
I recently enjoyed watching Michele at “The Creative Cove” on YouTube draw a bunch of fairy mushroom houses. I thought it looked like fun and wanted to try it on watercolor paper so I could paint them afterwards.
One afternoon this weekend, I did just that. My sketches are in a larger scale than the ones in the tutorial, which on the one hand gives you more opportunity to add details (not that I did that). However, the downside is that (for me, at least) it’s possibly harder or more time-consuming to add all the lines (hatching?) for shading. More difficult to make them smooth and pleasantly flowing, maybe? Shading or hatching is not something I’m particularly good at, anyway. I guess it gets easier with practice. I’ll probably try again, maybe on a smaller scale and using hot press paper, which is more smoothly textured and therefore easier for drawing on with a pen.
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to spending some time painting these in (and maybe adding details in other media, too).
Both doodling these and painting them would be a perfect activity to enjoy while you listen to an audiobook or podcast!
