Hey Noodle! How's life been? I was wondering a few things...if you wouldn't mind answering a couple of questions!
What kinds of landscapes do you really enjoy painting/drawing?
Are there colours you find yourself really gravitating to?
What do you reference when drawing/painting? Your own pictures? Other peoples? Real life subjects?
Favourite watercolour method?
Do you pick out the size of your canvas/paper or just grab one on a whim?
What kind of subjects draw your attention? (e.g Happy people, colourful flowers, or maybe even still life's you create yourself?)
Favourite pencils/charcoal for drawing?
Do you have any tips for younger artists getting into traditional art? Anything you wish younger you knew?
:] No pressure to answer all of these, if any, btw! Have a good one :D
Hello there :D life has been decent and I hope you've been well too!! Let's see
-i really like to paint very green and saturated landscapes. It can be anything from flowers to trees to mountains, I just love it when there's lots of strong colours. But I mostly like to paint landscapes that are a bit messy? It helps me be a little looser with the painting and not obssess over details, if that makes sense. I try to use techniques that give the illusion of details and depth, though i don't know if i succeed but I try lol
-at the beginning, when I started out with art, I was always quite worried about it being realistic. But after a while I now feel that real life is quite desaturated, everything in nature is a tone of grey, and absolute colours are not very common to find. So I now try to make my art as colourful as possible for it to look lively and more my style, becasue when I was aiming for realism, all my art would turn out dull and muted and I couldn't figure out why. Some colours I really use a lot are greens, all kinds really. I love all colours, but I think green is the colour I enjoy using the most these days.
-i use a lot of places to find my reference photos- pinterest, tumblr, Instagram, Google, and my mom is always sending me random pictures of clouds and landscapes and mountains too. Sometimes when I'm drawing people and I need to understand anatomy I use myself as a reference, although I don't really draw full human anatomy much, only portraits. Sometimes I use my own pictures of flowers and clouds and all that as reference too. I actually have a folder in my phone gallery for references, and I put at least 5 pictures I find in it everyday, because I'm always finding weird things to use as references. I save a lot of old paintings by classical painters too so that I can study them later, learning from the masters is the best way to learn :)
-ehh I don't really know the formal names for methods, you know? But I do like the wet on wet method, I love the look of it. I also like making clouds in watercolour, also fun hack- put down a wash of your blue watercolour, take a paper towel and blot where you want clouds to be-voila pretty clouds!!
-i just grab stuff on a whim and use whatever I feel like whenever I want and make it fit to my art, I don't really plan much, although I'm trying to do that more lol
-i actually don't have a definite favorite subject, I think it really depends on my mood, but I think most of the time I really like making simple things you know, like goats, urban sketches, simple portraits. I don't try to overthink about it, and just draw whatever I feel like. Although in portraits I really love drawing people candid lately
-i use the Staedlr pencils and Faber castle Matt black hb pencils for graphite drawing, and for charcoal pencils I use a local brand. I also have charcoal pencils from General Pencil Co. And they're really good too
-well I think one thing about traditional art is it can be expensive. So what I used to do when trying out a new medium was buy a cheap one and if I like it then get a better quality one. Also when it comes to brushes, I think it's best to buy good quality brushes. I used to buy cheap brushes and use them until they were in horrid condition and then buy new ones every few months. It wasn't a very good system, so I bought better quality brushes and learned how to take care of them and now I have had some of my brushes for years and they're still in really good condition. So learn how to take care of your art supplies!! Also do research about art mediums and supplies, so that you know what you should start with when you're trying something new and don't get overwhelmed
When trying out a new medium, don't feel bad if you don't get it at first, it takes time and the first painting will probably be muddy, but don't give up without trying your best!!
I also think that when it comes to art, it's very important to practice. So draw everything! Fill lots of sketchbooks. And not everything has to be good or perfect, it's quite cruel to expect such perfection from yourself. I still struggle with practicing regularly but it really does help.
And as I mentioned earlier, learn form the masters! Whatever art style you're trying to do or learning, studying and drawing older artworks of masters will help you a lot
thats all I can think of now, thank you so much for this ask galen, you have a good one too <3333