Play!

Yesterday, I went to Wet Paint for the supplies I need for my January drawing class. The class is calling for an 18 inch by 24 inch pad of paper and and 18 inch by 24 inch pad of newsprint. This seems like a ridiculously large size, but I got what was on the list. In addition, I also purchased a palette to hold the water color paint that I purchased awhile back, along with a nice brush and water brush for water color.

I got home from work early, so it was time to play. First up, I played with mixing brown in acrylic paint. For both sets of brown, the same yellow, red, and white paint was used for mixing. In the first set, the blue was the greener shade of blue.

In this set, I used the blue that has a red shape to it. Gee, these look warmer!

As I was mixing, it was interesting looking at the color on the palette and seeing how it looked different when painted on the black gesso. Some of the browns did not look very brown on the palette, but looked great on the black background. I had the same visual disconnect when I started mixing gray. For some reason, a gray that ends up looking neutral on the black background looks too yellow mixed in the palette.

Next up, it was time to play with watercolor. I set up my colors in the palette this morning and left them to dry during the day. Even though I have no idea what I'm doing, that didn't stop me. I painted a bunch of circles with the different paint colors and tried to make some saturated and some less so. My first attempt to mix a new color (purple, of course) turned out a little harsh.

Next up, I wanted to play with the water brush. I grabbed a page of drawing from way back at the beginning of the year (January 11, 2016, to be exact) when I was doing the January daily drawing challenge with Creativebug.  These were drawn with a permanent marker, so it was safe to color them in with the water brush.

This is one of the reasons that I purchased water colors. I want to be able to add color to drawings and I also want to get or make a small travel set.

Last, but not least, I tried a bunch of sketches last night. Mostly, I tried to draw a bottle with a wire and cork closure.  They didn't turn out very well, so I switched to the little zipper back used to carry around drawing supplies. Earlier in the week, I watched a short video about hatch marks. I played around with them trying to show the shape / fold in the bag and to show the shadow.

It was really, really fun to have play time, this afternoon.