getting my act together - I
As a kid I always loved cartoons. I would watch them all day and I would buy those disney/painting books to copy draw those characters. Every single cartoon character that I found interesting would promptly get reproduced on one of my drawing books. exactly. I was messy with water colors and like. so I would stick to pencil and sketch pens for these. I would not bother about the colors, but the form was something I could exactly replicate. with pen you can exactly draw what you want. but with brush it requires discipline, something that nothing i have tried my hands at has been able to bestow upon me.
So it was a little weird for me when I first started attempting to use water colors. With paintings, the colors take primacy (especially in landscape or imagined drawings) over how the image is to be created rather than the boundaries as would be the case (or i thought) with pencil drawings. That is a huge learning i had much later, until which i had given up on painting. If you are stuck with key features and boundaries as a base to paint, it would get very difficult to paint. (though it helped me when i used to draw). This fixation and my impatience made me give up on water colors. besides, you would agree, water colors in themselves are quite non- intuitive. to use them properly you need to know the paper you are using them on, you need to prioritize colors and layers. The water colors would sog my paper and turn most of the drawing a smudgy, muddy affair.
I would think of none of these and start away with boundaries and features.
when learning to paint in school, i was among the most promising students. Mr. Jagtap, our lovely teacher, even gave me a blank canvas to be draw on that would eventually be put on the grand wall in the drawing room. It had excellent drawing/painting works of promising students who came before me. I was so terrified of that prospect and my inability to use water colors that I drew a usual (for me) character from disney's books. and then i didn't even give that canvas back to prof. I just kept it with myself.
But the biggest learning i have had, and that too much after leaving painting for a long time, was that that one can't paint if you are thrifty. I was so kanjoos (cheap) that I would try and use less colors to save colors. I would not let me color freely (firstly because of my cheapness and secondly because i wasn't drawing with colors in mind, but rather saw as colors something that fill the boundaries). The canvas would always be A4 which is very limiting.
Now i am correcting all these things and starting afresh. with paints. well poster colors for the start. but i am going to paint like i am a man with monies when it comes to colors. bigger canvases, flatter bigger brushes. lets see. but ya, not going to water color anytime soon.
So it was a little weird for me when I first started attempting to use water colors. With paintings, the colors take primacy (especially in landscape or imagined drawings) over how the image is to be created rather than the boundaries as would be the case (or i thought) with pencil drawings. That is a huge learning i had much later, until which i had given up on painting. If you are stuck with key features and boundaries as a base to paint, it would get very difficult to paint. (though it helped me when i used to draw). This fixation and my impatience made me give up on water colors. besides, you would agree, water colors in themselves are quite non- intuitive. to use them properly you need to know the paper you are using them on, you need to prioritize colors and layers. The water colors would sog my paper and turn most of the drawing a smudgy, muddy affair.
I would think of none of these and start away with boundaries and features.
when learning to paint in school, i was among the most promising students. Mr. Jagtap, our lovely teacher, even gave me a blank canvas to be draw on that would eventually be put on the grand wall in the drawing room. It had excellent drawing/painting works of promising students who came before me. I was so terrified of that prospect and my inability to use water colors that I drew a usual (for me) character from disney's books. and then i didn't even give that canvas back to prof. I just kept it with myself.
But the biggest learning i have had, and that too much after leaving painting for a long time, was that that one can't paint if you are thrifty. I was so kanjoos (cheap) that I would try and use less colors to save colors. I would not let me color freely (firstly because of my cheapness and secondly because i wasn't drawing with colors in mind, but rather saw as colors something that fill the boundaries). The canvas would always be A4 which is very limiting.
Now i am correcting all these things and starting afresh. with paints. well poster colors for the start. but i am going to paint like i am a man with monies when it comes to colors. bigger canvases, flatter bigger brushes. lets see. but ya, not going to water color anytime soon.
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