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Daily (or weekly or whatever frequency works for you) practice is essential if you try to improve your art. To find subject and motivation is - on the other hand side - unfortunately sometimes hard...
To cope with my own procrastinating tendencies, I started the series of Watercolor Journal Ideas that I will also document here and on my youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@zsuzsaaarrrt). Hence keeping myself accountable (just like one of my favorite art youtuber, Minnie Small often says :)
In this first post, I will focus on some mushrooms as easy, quick but still fairly complex subjects. Mushrooms are a great subject because they vary in size, form, color and texture, yet they are small and simply enough that you don't get overwhelmed by the task of painting them.
1. Intentions
Another of my favorite art youtubers, Jess Karp taught me: before every practice, set your intentions.
What would you like to improve with today's practice?
for me it is
- improve layering of colors so that they don't turn out too muddy
- find techniques to imitate texture
2. References
First of all, we need some good references! As per usual, Pinterest is the answer here :) I selected some mushroom photos that will serve as a reference for my sketchbook spread. There are a lot more in my Pinterest board, you can go & check them out!
You can find my Pinterest board here.
3. The painting
I have made a full process video that you can find on my youtube channel:
4. Takeaways
I urgently need to stop adding "background" to these type of small sketches :D 3 out of 7 sketches were basically turned from quite ok to OMG-what-happend-to you..
It comes from my tendency to overwork sketches.
Regarding layering, I definitely am getting better. They look less muddy and I start to get a feel when I need a warmer or cooler layer to achieve the final color result.
The texture on the last two mushroom looked certainly much better than at the first two tries. Less brush strokes but more intentional. Cleaner outer lines which comes from more focus on water control.
All in all quite happy with the result of this first exercise :)
If you got inspired after reading/watching my post and did also some mushroom sketches, tag me on IG (@zsuzsaaarrrt), I would love to see them.
happy painting,
zsuzsa