Dec 19, 2009
Watercolor Shadows
My new job as been soaking up all my time and creative energy, so I haven’t been very productive lately, aside from a few sketches in a small sketchbook.
This felt like a particularly long week, so I left early on Friday and decided to head up to my mom’s house for the weekend. We are currently in the middle of some major snow fall. Already we have about a foot of snow, and it’s supposed to keep snowing all day!
On the drive up I decided that I wanted to do some art this weekend, but wasn’t sure what. When I saw my mom’s new orchid sitting on the dining room table, I was inspired to pick up where I had left off with the technique of drawing from shadows. try out a couple of new techniques. I’ve done shadow drawings before, and had a few next steps in mind when I left off that I never got a chance to try out.
These shadow drawings are made possible by my mom’s dining room light which casts multi-faceted shadows. There might be science behind the shadows it casts, but I like to think it’s magic.
The drawings shown below are smaller (11×14) than the last ones (18×24) since I just wanted to experiment a bit. Maybe I’ll do a big one tomorrow. I had to scan them because I don’t have my card reader for my camera, so the images below are only part of the entire piece.
First I traced the shadows with pen, then did watercolor, then added the line texture with my pen:
For the next piece I traced the shadows with watercolor first, then outlined the watercolor and enhanced the shapes with lines, but no line texture in this one:
I like the first one from a distance because although the line texture blends together, it still looks quite flat and sharp, contrasting the soft and subtle texture of the watercolor. The second one is best appreciated up-close since the lines and shapes and the watercolor texture are so neat, but you don’t see it as much from a few feet away.
The small sketches I’ve been doing lately weren’t all that great, and they left me wondering if I’d lost my knack. Now I think I’ve got it back.
Oh dear, that rhymed.
I made it! I hope you have some time off during the holidays, so that you may be able to do more sketching! As I said, I like the simple complexity of the second work. Happy holidays, Anika!