With the arrival of Covid, the Visual Arts Passage organization started a Thursday night drawing program and named it "Illustration Isolation". Free for anyone that wanted to draw, a 2 hour time slot with 4 photographs and a time frame of 20 minutes per image to try your hand at illustration. At the end of the evening, the team of teachers would take a look at the drawings of the night and encourage everyone to keep coming back and draw along with them. My daughter began and in short order my grandaughter joined her, she was only 8 years old at the time. The youngest member of Illustration Isolation. After a few weeks I decided to give it a try, no idea of what media I would use and rusty as one can get.
Now, post Covid, the name has changed to "Drawing Hive". I suspect that there might be upwards of 100 people drawing, from all around the globe. My own initial attempts were with various markers, sometimes charcoal and a few with pastel. After some thought and knowing the time limit, I settled on watercolor, thinking that a little paint goes a long way. After a few horrible starts, and a second realization that one has to first draw the scene and then paint it, my determined self-kept the course.
A few changes in my strategy have helped tremendously, one is the paper. I now use Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper - 140 lb. It lets the watery paint hold on to every nuance in the colors and layers. Secondly, I changed my paint palette to one that is designed for skin colors, since we almost always do people, that way I am not working around multiple colors that rarely work with skin tones.
Three plus years later, and still going, I personally feel like this exercise has helped me tremendously in all of my art. The practice of shading; you have to understand that the photographs are usually selected for deep shadows and back lighting, make an artist understand directional light. The effort to actually make someone look like they should is seriously the hardest part! It's fan art, based on current movies or popular streaming series, a learning curve every Thursday night.
All who draw can do as they please, draw 1 or all 4, and many of the artist are using a tablet to create. The talent is incredible and even though I usually finish (or nearly finish) 2 or 3, I usually only post 1 (Instagram) that I am satisfied with. Some nights none, just because it wasn't my night.
Here are a few recent watercolor sketch/paintings that made me happy.
light from the top right and back
light from the bottom left
light from the top right and side left
muted light from the top right and back
muted light from above
I would encourage anyone that wants to give it a try to sign-up with "Drawing Hive" or Visual Arts Passage. To see more of my daughters and granddaughters, look up on.thursdays.we.draw on Instagram.
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