Coronavirus Crafts: M&T

 Hello friends! Here's my most recent watercolor project. It's a (long delayed) wedding gift for a dear friend. I knew this picture would be a fun challenge, especially with the reflection and the angles of their faces.

Honestly very satisfied with this drawing.

Hey, M and T: If you ever need proof that you'd make a classy white-haired couple (or evidence of what you looked like in the preexistance), here it is. 

The background came together rather quickly. I tried to work so that the reflection matched up without being identical. I think it worked fairly well (though some of it was pure luck).

When I painted his sweater, I thought "Oh no! Maybe I over-emphasized it!" But most people I've shown it to have mentioned immediately how good it looks. So... good.

Tristan's hair. I'm fairly satisfied with it. 

Did some basic things with M's dress (and actually just called it good for simplicity's sake). I was a little bit nervous about M's hair but it came together fairly well.

CAN WE JUST TALK ABOUT HOW GREAT M'S HAIR TURNED OUT?!

The jewelry came together well, too.

I bet you're wondering why I have a dirty toothbrush here...
It's a creative trial and error effort for the beach.

I went a little too dark on the beach (not necessarily intentionally), but it came out okay.

Here's the final photo. 

I'm pretty happy about all of this. And I'm becoming more comfortable taking risks and trying new things in painting. 

Coronavirus Crafts: Roommate Wedding

So my lovely red-headed roommate got married in the Payson Temple a while ago, and we just connected again so she could share the picture she wanted. Remember how I try to avoid head-on shots and figures closely interacting? Lol. 

The Sketch. I kind of panicked and forgot how to draw at first. But I got there eventually. 

Things I should have noticed at this stage but didn't: 1) His face needs to be longer. 2) Her nose ends too high. 3) Her arm should be reshaped. 4) The shadow of the bouquet is off. 5) I should have drawn them bigger in proportion to the background and then I wouldn't have had to worry so much about the architecture. 

The Windows and the Suit. I'm mildly disappointed in the windows, but I'm pretty proud of the suit. I just focused on the different shadows and letting them decide the shape.

The Wall. Architecture is a bit of a weakness for me. Partially because I don't find it particularly interesting to paint, so I don't have a lot of experience. But I think this came out fairly well. 

The Faces. Faces are always hard, but they're especially difficult when they're wrinkled with emotion. Shadows are hard on faces because you don't want to make them black or too gray because then the face looks sick and tired. And sometimes doing a darker skin tone doesn't give enough of a contrast. So it's a tough balance. But I'm getting better at getting the small details with just a few hairs of his brush. 

The Flowers and His Hair. I went minimal with the flowers and didn't bother drawing them out in detail beforehand. I think this is about when I realized that his face was a little short. I was tempted to try and compensate by making his hair longer. But I didn't. It's a different hairstyle than I've done before, but I think it came out okay.

Her Hair. My roommate has the most gorgeous red hair. I wanted it to look realistic while still making it rich. Also, my sister did our roommate's hair on the day, so I really had to try to do it justice.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, even if I had to simplify the twists a bit. 

The Green and the Dress. Okay, I got a little lazy here with the green. I added shadows to the dress to create the shape.  

The White Highlights. Guys, I really love the effect of the white gel pen. It really makes the lace stand out. I may have gone a little bit overboard in some places, but I'll learn. 

Final picture (the best shot I got before I delivered it to its happy new home).

Coronavirus Crafts: J at the temple

So I let J choose, between two pictures, what I would paint for her birthday. She chose the one of K and J splashing in puddles. This was the other option. And Aria stood by her 3-year-old's choice, but we both knew that Aria wanted to see this one in watercolor. Well, it just so happens that Mother's Day isn't that far away from J's birthday, so I just did both. 

Happy Mother's Day, Aria!

I did not expect the temple to be so hard to draw! I guess I don't have a lot of experience drawing architecture, and somehow doing it at a slight angle is infinitely more difficult than doing it straight on. But I think it came together pretty well.  

Does the quality of the watercolor paint have something to do with the vibrancy of the color? The slightly higher-quality set I got when I was 12  (or maybe 14) is essentially dried out at this point, though I can still use some of it. (That's the magic of watercolor.) The new set I have was much cheaper and lower quality and I've noticed naturally brighter hues. But for a tropical Hawaii scene, bright colors really fit.  

Yellow highlight on the top of the bushes. Darker green detail. 

The sidewalk and her cute little shadow. I felt a lot better about the stairs this time, but maybe that's because there's only really one. 

I was very carefree with the sky. Part of that is because the original photo portrays a fairly washed-out or too-light sky, so I knew it would be up to my artistic interpretation anyway. I liked the thought of capturing movement and change in the sky, since that's what I've usually experienced in Hawaii.

Goodness, these windows were difficult. They had to be very small, very even, and very symmetrical. And they all had to be like that. Even though it's just a handful of rectangles, I think it was the hardest part of painting this piece.

I added the rest of the detail to the temple. I was a little at a loss for how to depict the relief sculpture at the front of the temple. It's too far away to show in great detail, but it still has to look purposeful. So I looked at the relief sculpture and narrowed it down to the most basic shapes: lines, curves, circles, and L-shapes. Then I painted those. 

Also, J looks like a cute little ghost child here.

Skin color is always a bit of a hit or a miss, and there are more highlights and shadows than you'd think. I think this came out fairly well. 

Her dress is mainly pink with some variegated pink-and-orange tulle. I tried to capture that in the little folds of the dress. 

J has lovely blond hair that curls naturally in her humid Hawaiian home. I tried to copy over as much life and spontaneity and color into her hair as possible without making it too dark. 

The letters on the temple were another tricky part. I know that they read "Holiness to the Lord -- The House of the Lord," but the perspective of this painting places the letters too far in the background. The viewer shouldn't be able to read the phrase on the temple. However, the lines should look like the phrase even if they aren't clear enough to really read. So I wrote out the phrase on piece of scrap paper in a larger scale, imagined the essential elements of the letters and word groups, and wrote that. It worked out well, so I added it to the temple. It could probably be centered better, but it's not bad. 

Finished, scanned product.

Coronavirus Crafts: April Wedding Watercolor

I love weddings. I caught three bouquets last year, and one of them was for my dear Hermana Stapley (who is no longer either an Hermana or a Stapley). She is one of the few people who has ever taken me up on my offer (my standard wedding gift for good friends) to do a painting of a wedding photo. And though I just missed their anniversary, it still made a good (rather belated) wedding gift, a house-warming gift, and a Mother's Day gift. Here are my progression photos of the project. 

1. The original. I'm a little bit picky about the pictures I'll paint. I have to really like the picture, I have to feel (at least moderately) comfortable in being able to do a good job of it, and it has to have a good composition (or the potential for it).  And lately, I've been a bit more up to a challenge. This painting is a first for me in the following ways:

• A temple (I think)
• Full, standing figures interacting
• White-on-white-on-white-on-white
• Stairs (probably, or at least this many)

Original photo

2. The sketch. I borrowed a ruler and had to label the sides of stairs ("top" and "face") so I could keep the silly things straight. And, as usual, I struggled with drawing the groom's face. (Why are men's features so hard?!) But I'm happy with how everything else turned out in this phase. 

The sketch

3. The mountains and our paint night. My family members in Hawaii and Las Vegas joined me for an evening of watercolor painting. It was a first attempt at watercolor for some of them, and I'm quite proud. 

Paint night

4. Full mountains, some green added (I mean, it looks like a desert mountain for now, but it'll get there.)

Full mountain

5. Temple detail. Painting white isn't the easiest thing in watercolor, and it's easy to over do it in the gray. But I'm generally happy with how it turned out in this stage. 

Temple detail

6. Windows. I added the blue detail with the windows in the temple and finished the rest of the temple. I'm not thrilled with the right side or the top left part of the temple, but I think the overall structure turned out well.

Window detail

7. Stairs and cement. Telling the difference between the different sides of the stairs is a bit tough, and it's hard to know whether you've succeeded until more of the painting is filled in.

Stairs and cement

8. Flora. The trees had white blossoms, which, again, are hard to paint. So I focused on trying to paint the negative space. It's not something I'm super familiar with, but I think it came out well. The tulips came out okay, too. 

Flora

9.  The suit and the dress. I was lucky enough to have an old tube of dried-out watercolor paint in about the right color for the suit. And the great thing about watercolor is that you can always re-hydrate it. I did make a silly mistake, painting the area I had sketched for his white collar blue because I thought it was the lapel of his suit. That was unfortunate, and there's not really anything you can do to fix a mistake like that in a watercolor painting. So I let it be. For the dress, I used the lightest grays I could to suggest folds while still preserving the whiteness of the dress. Getting the two layers of fabric was mostly trial and error, going for the lightest touch. 

The suit and the dress.

10. Skin and hair. Hermana Stapley has the most incredible white-blonde hair! And boy, that was difficult to translate, but I tried to really read into the highlights and the colors in the photo and paint them sparingly. Skin is always difficult, especially with shadows and highlights. I definitely had some trial and error there, but I think it came out well. 

*It's worth noting that the paper curls up at the edges after I paint it: I promise the stairs didn't suddenly go crooked. It's just the paper.

Skin and hair

11.  Face details. One of the hardest things about painting or drawing a face is drawing what you see instead of drawing what you think. If you think "eye" or "ear" or "nose," you'll draw what you expect it to look like, which is often very different from what it actually looks like from a specific angle or in a certain setting. I'm much more satisfied with the groom's face in the transition from the sketch to the painting. Also, it's very hard to get the right paintbrush with the right amount of paint on the fewest hairs in order to get those tiny, crucial lines on the face. I'm generally satisfied with how it worked out here (though I did have a couple serious scares).

Face details

12. The sky. Honestly, it was a little intimidating to fill in something so simple, so visible, that takes up an inordinate amount of the painting. It had to be free and open without drawing attention to itself. And there's nowhere to hide mistakes. I may have cheated a bit and ensured that the angel Moroni was in front of a cloud so I didn't have to worry about getting the blue too close to the yellow. But what is art if it doesn't improve slightly on reality? 

The sky

13. Final details. So one of the most difficult parts of this project was adequately and accurately portraying the white-on-white details. I tried doing it in previous projects with just watercolor paints and watercolor pencils, but it was barely visible. My little sister mentioned using a white gel pen for some detail in watercolor paintings. So I found one and went for it. Mixed media! I really love how it turned out, and it was a lot easier than I expected! I added some white highlights to her hair, then I used the pen to outline the edge of the veil and the dress, add buttons, create the lace texture, and enhance the nuance in some natural elements. 

Final details

14. Final product. I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end. I found this great frame at the discount section at Michael's when I bought the gel pen. The minor tragedy is this: my paper size was 9x12 and the frame was 8.5x11. I have a growing frustration with the absurd lack of 9x12 frames, as I've either had to plan ahead or cut down a painting to fit. Cutting this one down, when I felt like I had really zeroed in on placement and formatting way back in the sketching stage, hurt more than I thought it would. Still, I think the final setting worked well.

Final product

It was bitter sweet saying goodbye to this piece today. I had expected to be able to hold onto it for another day and get a proper photograph or something, but the timing didn't quite work out and I rushed the framing a bit to get it ready for pickup. I looked at it for a good long while, trying to savor my final moments with a masterpiece (which is definitely an exaggeration, but those were the words that came to my mind at the time). 

I started doing these painting commissions to push myself to do more art and to give meaningful gifts. And it's been incredible. Still, it's kind of sad that I don't own any of my own recent originals. So, maybe someday soon, I'll have to commission a piece for myself. 

Coronavirus Crafts: 3 Happy Birthday, Jennie

Today is my niece's birthday! I have been meaning to do a watercolor painting for her like I did for her older sister, K (see K's ocean painting). I let J choose from two of my favorite photos of her, and this is the one she chose. After I sketched it out one evening (while listening to Brandon Sanderson's The Emperor's Soul), I gathered my supplies to begin the painting process (which took all of Captain Marvel and some of Endgame the next day, if we measure time by movies). 

The paintbrush and watercolor set is at least 13 years old, and I've supplemented it over the years with other art kits and supplies I've been given. (Someday, if I ever get to be a real artist, maybe I'll be picky enough to buy my own supplies and get higher-quality materials. But, as our favorite Ranger said, "It is not this day.")

I decided to actually study a little bit of watercolor technique this time, using the book featured in the first photo. So I experimented with leaving more areas blank and having lighter washes. I think it worked out decently well. 

This was the "ghost children" phase, as Eliza called it. 

My cheap watercolor sets don't offer amazing options for skin tone, and I've generally avoided painting people full-on anyway (it's amazing how far you'll go outside of your comfort zone to please a soon-to-be-three-year-old). So I'm not thrilled, but I'm satisfied with how this stage turned out. There are a couple of frustrating things I could point out. I'd rather not immortalize them, but I'm thinking of them.   

A fun comparison and a little insight to how I'm working on it. 

Here's where I added the masking liquid. It's a kind of glue that prevents the watercolor paint from adhering to certain areas, and then you can remove it when you're done. 

Finishing the painting. (It was maybe a little ambitious to choose such a wet, reflective scene, but there you go.)

Removing the masking liquid.

Finished product (photo taken with a MUCH higher quality camera).

Original photo (a screenshot from the video below)

Original video