A study in form

The other day

I tried my hands on giving form to a subject using dark, light and one color only. I ended up using three green colors, but only tiny drops of two of them.
I lightly sketched my subject using a green watercolor pencil, that's all. After sketching and some work with the paint I had a piece looking like the one below. The peas look much greener in this photo, it's the light used only that makes the difference. Still a lot of work to do.

I kept working. while I could hear the teacher in a class I'm taking say, take your time. I took my time, and it sure paid off. Instead of leaving the background without paint, I chose to add some blue color as you'll see below. Why I didn't think of making the blue color with stright lines is a mystery. Note to self, always think while working! Well, so far so good.

Next step was to add highlights and shadows, and boy did I do that! I simply ruined my entire work. White and gold pens used in a generous amount. And then the shadow, failure as well. At this stage I had to take a looong break. Notice that I even signed it before I realized my failure. Oh my! I have no clue where my mind was while doing this, but apparently it was not with me. In this writing moment there's a text line from Pink Floyd coming to my mind.........."there's someone in my head, but it's not me..."

During the break, I realized my work was ruined so it wouldn't matter if I did it completely. I therefor decided to try a rescue maneuver, new failure would not matter on top of a ruined work.

I actually was able to fix most of it, and the end product came out pretty well, if I might say so myself. I used water and paper towel to remove as much of the white pen as I wanted to, added a darker blue in the background, which works even better than the first one, strightened up the lines and then added my shadows using charcoal. All in all it was a great work session, containing lots of learning for me.

This piece measures 15 by 15 cm's and was done on a hand made paper, and this time I let my sign be.

Thanks for popping in!