Autumn Animals and River Scene
I finally joined two Patreon groups for people I’ve been following on social media who have some really beautiful artwork and a lot of awesome techniques to learn from. So this week, I followed along with two Patreon replays.
The first was an “Autumn Animals” session with Ohn Mar Win that I split across two days. The first day, I did two 15-minute illustrations, one of a hedgehog, and the other of a Treecreeper bird. I ended up going back in and adding a bit to these to help improve them, so maybe let’s call them 20-minute sketches? Anyway, I really think the poor little hedgehog didn’t turn out quite the way I had hoped, but he does look like a hedgehog at least! I felt a lot more comfortable sketching the Treecreeper, as I’ve been practicing a lot of different birds. I like the way this one turned out, but maybe if I limit my time even more, I could get it to feel just a little more loosey-goosey.
On the second day, I worked on the 25-minute sketch of the Long-eared Owl. This was a fun challenge for sure, and I really like how it turned out! Apparently I really enjoy drawing birds :) I was really focused on texture here, because the owl’s feathers had such amazing textures to them. I didn’t quite capture the realistic texture, but I do like how it came out.
The second Patreon replay I joined was a “River Life” scene with Katie Moody. The idea behind this scene is SO cool: the scene combines both and over- and underwater view, and she has it broken up into seven shorter timed segments where we work on different particular elements using different photo sources. I spent two sittings so far working on 5 of the timed sessions, and I am not super happy with how it’s turning out, but I really like the process. Katie has another Patreon video with a very similar way of building an over- and underwater Ocean scene, so I know I’m definitely going to want to try that!
I think I’m going to do one more sitting with this, just to try to improve what I’ve started, and then call it done. My biggest issue was that I started way too heavy/dark on my base gouache layer so it’s going to be difficult to layer on top of it, and it feels really flat as it is now. I do really like the little fish at the bottom of the page, so that’s my favorite part right now!
Lastly, I took an evening this week just to play around aimlessly in my small 4.7in. square sketchbook. It was just fun to play around with my supplies, especially with my Neocolors, which I only use sparingly right now, since I just have a really basic set of colors that are usually brighter than I’m looking for, but I still really love them. Looking to do more of this aimless play in the future–it was relaxing!
