Tag: Wet Canvas

The photos for the Weekend Drawing Event on Wet Canvas this weekend came from a "smallholding" (a small farm) in Newfoundland, Canada. I've been doing a lot of loose and free sketching lately so it was fun to focus on the details of the crenulations around his bill. They call him B.D. for Big Duck and he's a Muscovy. It's so much fun having a different person post pictures from their life from different parts of the world each week, and then seeing the paintings the members of the group have made from the photos they've chosen. In just the past few weeks we've had photos from the Netherlands, the Virgin Islands, a farm in North Dakota, and now Newfoundland. I've heard of armchair travel books where you just READ about traveling…I guess this is armchair painting!

For this week's Wet Canvas 2-hour drawing or painting challenge they posted photos from the Virgin Islands. I picked this photo of a guy named Jupiter. It was a challenge to paint it in the assigned two hours since I would normally work much more slowly. It took 2 hours to paint and then another hour to try to get a decent digital image of the painting. I finally gave up and used this one, even though the color isn't accurate– the painting doesn't have the dark blue area on his face. (…continued below)

I also tried doing the painting in Photoshop using digital brushes and digital paint. It was way too easy. I asked myself this question: If I could quickly turn out beautiful watercolors by doing it digitally would I want to, and the answer was "No." I enjoy the challenge, the deep seeing, mixing the colors, moving the paint and water around, seeing it puddle and flow. Sculpting by lifting the paint, creating illusions of light, depth, texture, shadow. The sensual pleasure of good brushes, good paper, lots of juicy puddles of paint. Or I could spend more time at the computer?