Grenbug

This card is for finished art pieces of my own. I am tracking these as part of my 10k Hours because if I work on one of these, it often means I don’t have time for a lesson that day.

This lesson is about taking an idea for a piece through steps of concept, thumbnail, sketches, pencil, ink, and watercolor. I should also add to my list a set of what I want to work on in this piece. I am trying to add more thought ahead of time to my process. For example, I did thumbnails and sketches on this enough times that I was able to do the final sketch from my own sketches instead of from a screen reference. I knew the piece by the time I was working on watercolor paper. But there were some things that I missed, such as deciding on a light source, deciding how to depict things like grass and stone bricks. The sketch was good, but then I kind of just filled in the lines with color and didn’t really think about rendering or lighting. Now, this is fantastic, because I can recognize what’s missing! But, for now, it’s missing from my process. Eventually, I will learn how to do these things and it will become more ingrained. I won’t have to think about how to depict a grassy slope. But, while I continue to learn, I need to think about those things.

Next time I will follow even more of a process to make sure I have more things decided up front of how to light and render things.

Micron fine liner and Koi watercolors on Canson XL Watercolor paper, 7×10 inch. Image is 5×7 inch.

I did 1 hour making thumbnails and sketches, 1 hour testing watercolors, then 2 hours sketching, inking and painting to complete this image.