Hello, Hive friends! Welcome to my sphere, and guess what? In this blog I will be yapping about art. Remember the pandemic? Yes, that horrid thing that locked up the world for a year. People were struggling a lot and doing their own ways of coping with the situation. Good thing for me, I am kind of used to locking myself up in my room since that is part of my lifestyle, but still, to be in that situation was pretty hard at times. But there’s something good that came with it, and that is the amount of time I was able to find to create. It offered me a chance to explore more with art, such as trying out different mediums: acrylics, gouache, watercolor, etc., exploring varied art styles and subjects to create.
And with that being said, let me present to you one of my painting processes. See this little painting?
This is one of my favorites. I love watching painting videos on YouTube, and a favorite artist of mine that goes with the name Jimena Agra for her channel inspired me to paint a dainty little teacup. She is so lovely and a great painter. She paints like the impressionist masters.
With the same lovely reference she used for her painting, I decided to create one as well. I started off by sketching lightly using my 0.5 mm mechanical pencil. It is ideal to create light sketches to avoid creating dark smudges once you start painting. I sometimes use kneaded erasers to lighten my sketch, but sometimes I end up with darker sketches. I just cannot avoid doing it. Hahahah.
After doing my sketch, I started filling it with my gouache paint. I usually go from light to dark, because in that way, I find it easier to build up the depth in my paintings.
I laid down the base colors without minding the details first. This step is a bit crucial, honestly, because for most artists, this is usually the step where they find their paintings unappealing. It is like the ugly step in painting. I honestly find it challenging as well; seeing my painting looking kind of ugly sometimes demotivates me to continue. I would start having negative thoughts like, “Oh, is this gonna work?” “It looks so ugly! I just want to give up.”
But I am going to tell you guys to just TRUST THE PROCESS; continue what you are doing, because it will get better! Never judge an unfinished artwork, they say.
After putting the base colors, I started building it up by adding more saturation and shadows to it. This is also the step where I start working on the details, adding more outlines and highlights to it.
Once I have finished painting the teacup, it is now time to do the background. For this painting, I tried to create the background a bit looser than what is in my reference photo. The key to creating loose painting is allowing your hand to move freely without too much control and focusing on creating softer edges.
For the background, I decided to only add the shadows since I am working on a white paper, and by doing so, it helped me create an illusion of a thin, soft, white fabric wherein the teacup is laid on.
The shape of the teacup is a bit wonky; it is not perfectly shaped, but it is not totally bad because it adds to its character. This was the first time I created a loose painting since in most of my paintings I tend to focus too much on details. Doing it this way was like a breath of fresh air for me, and I actually really loved how this turned out. Now that I think of it, I should do more of this.
To tell you, my favorite technique of painting is impressionism. I love how it expresses freedom, and I love seeing the textures and the unblended strokes on it. And my most favorite painter of all time, well, if you’ve been in my profile, you will be able to guess. It is Claude Monet! I fall in love with his works, especially his painting of the water lilies. Ahhhh. I love it so much that I recreated it using acrylics because I cannot afford oil paints yet since they are on the expensive side. I recreated the painting, took a photo of it, and that’s the photo I used as the cover page for my account here in Hive.
I will just insert a photo of that painting here so you can see it even though you are not asking for it, but still I want you to see it, hahahah. So, here you go!
Painting is therapeutic, like what they said, but it can also be stressful at times, honestly. Hahaha. However, that is totally fine because it is part of the process; also, you can take breaks, stay away from it, and come back to it with a fresh and new perspective. And one more time, you just gotta trust the process and go on with it. Do not give up midway, because it will prevent you from seeing the outcome; that goes for either in painting or life in general. Who knows, it might end well, and if not, then you just gotta learn from the things you don’t like about it and create another one with all of the learnings and discoveries you had from your previous works.