I Should Learn When to Stop.

Fuck you too, Watercolor-san. FUCK YOU TOO.

So.. uhh... I'm trying to learn learning how to use watercolor and failing miserably. I really fell in love with Agnes Cecile's style (go and google her!). But of course, I still can't do anything that remotely looks like her works but I'm working on it. And since I'm a super-noob in using this medium, I'm already feeling frustrated. The paper kept on curling, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with prepping it. Maybe too much water? But I haven't really achieved an acceptable one that it's getting really frustrating. It's already on to the point that I skip that step all together and proceed to sketching. -_-" (Curl, paper. CURL ALL YOU WANT!)

I like my work only until the first wash/coat. After that, my blunders become way too obvious: the paper tears, the paint mixes with other paints they're not supposed to mix with and I paint where I should not. Frustrating. But no, I don't want to give up. 

I only use these brushes, but I realized I should buy another 2 round tip brushes around sizes 4 and 18 (probably). 

round tip brushes size 00 and 8.and random chinese brush
I don't use my flat brushes since they easily scrape my paper. 

Prang watercolor refill (31php per color)
I'm still missing purple.

The two works below are the only works (out of 5) that I can hazard to put here. And I still feel that they're failures. But they're a start. I want to document here my progress (if ever I would actually improve). I just took  photos of them. I don't want to bother myself to scan them since I'm still far from happy with them. So.. uhh... yeah, they're kind of blurry.

And yeah, they're supposed to be fan arts. 

Dark and Full of Terrors

It was really hard to control the flow of the watercolor. My hand shakes a bit when I do the small parts and details. I actually used the watercolor like an acryllic in the eye part. I butchered the lips part. If it wasn't blurry, you'd see that I used too much water and coated way too many times. The nose was too flat. The hair was horrendous. I need to work on my lights and shadow.

Kissed by Fire
I'm sorry Jon Snow, I butchered her.

Here I tried using just two colors. Kind of horrible result. Far from how I imagined it to be. I might try to do this idea again when I improve a little. I just don't know if I'll improve. My rationale behind the blue skin color was that she lived beyond the wall where there's always snow. And that color would lift up the color of her hair which was said to be "kissed by fire". But yeah, enough excuses. I still did a poor job. I kind of like her earlier but I overworked on her too much. It resulted in too much color imbalance. Some were just too dark. I tried to remedy it by highlighting some parts using a silver gel pen but fuck it made her worse (especially the eyes/eyelashes). I also used the pen too much. I decided to stop rather than butcher her some more. The only part I like in her is her mouth. But I still need to improve on that too. And again, my shadows were too confused.

I should learn when to stop. I also need to try another brand/kind of watercolor paper. I'll just practice some more on the rest of my papers and look for a new brand. A thicker one. 180 gsm wasn't enough for me.

I actually tried to do a landscape (godswood) but I subconsciously accidentally poured my cup of water in it. Oh, well. No hard feelings. Too much mistakes in it.

So.. uhh.. yeah. I'll do some more when I gather enough courage to hold the brush again. But still, FUCK YOU WATERCOLOR-SAN!