Gouache Swatch and the Abstract Eye (Complete)

November 6, 2023

She Is Complete!!

I planned to attach multiple jewels, but decided it was too much. I decided on one jewel near the center of the eye. For the finer details of the drawing I used gel pen. This was a very fun experiment and I would totally love to do more like this.

I live for these moments when I'm in the zone and having fun! This is what art is all about!

Keep reading for previous updates!

----------------------------------

Starting a new painting of an eye, inspired by an artwork of a very trippy duck. More on that below.

October 29, 2023

Surface of choice: acrylic paper. Trying out some new drawing techniques. Red line for the main silhouette. NO details!!! Next is blue for major shapes. Green for details. Brown for even smaller details. 

Here is the underpainting. I love to get carried away during this stage making sure it looks just right. I want to add lots of detailed patterns and colors, so this one will be painted with acrylic gouache. Also, I plan to glue on jewels at the end.

Inspiration: I was looking through my Louis Wain art book and there is an artwork of a duck that I absolutely adore. Look. At. This. Duck. Sadly I can't find the image online, but it's in the book I have. (I wonder what other beautiful artworks I've never seen...)

If you examine it more closely you can see the fundamental elements hidden under all the trippy colors and patterns. I would totally love to try this out. I traced over the image to better single out the hidden relationships and patterns. He knew all the rules and how to break them.

-----------------

October 30, 2023

Love how this is coming along so far. The patterns are fairly contained, so for my next session I hope to be more adventurous. 

Before cutting them out

Made some swatch cards for my gouache collection. This has greatly improved my experience painting with gouache. It's like digital color picking but IRL. I can pick out the colors and see how they look together side-by-side.

Each card contains:

• Color straight from the tube
• Name
• Munsell rating
• Pigments (other than PW6)

I would like to make a copy of this chart so I can easily see all of my colors at once. I do have a Munsell circle but it doesn't have the names + some of them are my sister's and I don't have access to them anymore. But it is a cool circle. I'll post that later.

November 1, 2023

I made a second color chart for my gouache colors, seen in the background. The first version was destroyed after I spilled water all over it just as I started out. Dude. I was so mad. Thankfully I only got two colors down so I didn't lose that much. But still not a great way to start the night.

Making a color chart was a great idea so I can see all of my colors at a glance. Combining it with the individual color cards makes it a lot easier to strategically pick out colors. 

Thoughts on this next update: I am endlessly fascinated by the rainbow spectrum. When viewed from far away it just looks like a brown colored eye. I concluded this session more abruptly than usual, so some parts still look a little rough.

I find it very interesting the way these colors interact with the underpainting. I used Pale Aqua, Pale Mint, and Pale Lime for the eye. The yellowish orange underpainting seems to neutralize these colors.

Still have more work to do on this one, and I can't wait!