My journey in art began during the pandemic in 2020. Since then, I’ve managed to move on from simple figures and scenes to more detailed subjects, much to my delight. Learning to capture shadows and to properly do gradations of shades has been the most difficult skill to develop. It seems I’m making good progress.
These mushrooms are a level above anything I’ve tried in the past, and I am very pleased with how they came out! While not an exact replica of the photo, they come closer than I expected!
Using color also helps with shading and shadows, as it adds even more nuance. This iris took about six hours over two days.
Emboldened by these and other more advanced subjects, I decided to try doing a still life with glass. For this project, I chose a watercolor painting by Shaji Chaladan, a gifted watercolor artist who provides wonderful tutorial examples on his social media platforms. I cannot do watercolor yet, but I hope to give it a try soon.
This painting has two features that I wanted to attempt to replicate—surface reflections and glass transparency. I began this drawing by creating a freehand drawing on newsprint. After a lot of erasing and redrawing, I arrived at a usable skeleton drawing. Next, I used tracing paper to capture the skeleton drawing and transfer it to Legion Stonehenge Drawing paper. The entire process took place over two days and maybe six or seven hours.
Overall, I think this turned out pretty well. What do you think?
Now that my spring gardening chores have eased up, I hope to try a few basic watercolor paintings.
