Sunday, 28 October 2012

• watercolors at midnight

  So apparently there's a hurricane coming and it's going to be horrifically terrifyingly horrible. Maybe. Maybe not. I haven't actually watched a news report so I don't know.

  Anyway, in case the world ends, here's a post with some watercolor experiments I've been creating lately.
  

  Firstly,
  

  

   

  I don't know what my goal was with this one. Just playing around, I suppose? I like the colors, but I have no idea why I gave her a hat. Seriously, I have no idea why I do most of the things I do, never mind my artistic motivations.
  

  Second!
  

  

  I was trying to go for something like "dowdy school marm" with this. I have no idea why. But there it is. Of course, a real dowdy school marm would probably be all in grays and browns and wouldn't have so much of her hair showing but anyway.
  

  Third!
  

  

  So for this one, I put in a background (gasp!) which is rather out of the ordinary for me. I was experimenting, I think, with some translucency on the sleeves, which now that I'm looking at it didn't come out too terrible. The dress design is pretty typical "me" but I didn't give her long hair. Well now, that's a bit different. Wonder why I did that. No, I don't know.
  

  Next!
  

  

  I really like the blue and purple color scheme, as you can tell. I will need to remind myself to draw the next fancy lady in greens or reds or something. Anyway. I went for more embellishments with this one, but didn't bother with trying to draw hands. /lazy. I think I came up with the hairstyle back in some previous post in which I was trying to design some fancy hairstyle for fancy ladies to wear in my still-untitled-epic-dragon-story. Which, I must admit, was somewhat motivated by the fancy hairstyles the fancy ladies where in Game of Thrones. I don't recall the hairstyles being described in detail in the novels, which is to be expected given that the author is a man, but the designers on the show are certainly creative. I am unskilled in most things related to hair, including drawing it in any sort of odd hairstyle, so this is pretty simple in comparison.
  

  Numbah Five:
  

  

  It's probably impossible to tell from these scans (or maybe not) since I've sized them all about the same, but as we're progressing along through the timeline of these experiments, the scale is getting larger. The first little painting way up above was drawn significantly smaller than this one, and that was in part so that I could add a bunch of embellishments to this one. I made an attempt at a hand here, and lots of lacy ruffly doily thingies which I'm not sure if you can tell what they're supposed to be but I think don't look awful. Maybe. Basically the same hairstyle, though, so meh on the creativity as far as that goes. I think I'm getting the hang of how colors and lighting and shading and all that work in the world of watercolors, which is naturally different than how things work with colored pencils or pastels.
  

  Well, that's that for fancy ladies. Finally, this:
  

  

  Because I haven't drawn a dragon in quite a while, and I wanted to remind myself he existed. I'm not overall thrilled with this, I think his color should be maybe a bit darker, his neck should be longer, and I'm not at all crazy about the head/eyes, but I like the way the wings turned out, and I drew a little Rider on him which I think I actually like the scale of also. It's nice to have these things in my head even if nobody but me ever sees these drawings, because if I have a consistent image in my head it means I'll describe a consistent image on paper.
  

  Anyway, I'm not terribly wonderful at drawing dragons, so I think I will probably look at some more professional-ish type things on Deviant Art and such and learn things from that. More practice!
  

  In other news, I am almost all set for the hurricane. I have my umbrella and I have a couple of flashlights and a bunch of candles. I have plenty of toilet paper and cat food. I do need to go food shopping tomorrow because I don't have any meat or things of nutritional substance to eat, which I'm sure will be fun if it is raining and also busy. I have a notebook and pen to write with and a sketchbook to draw with so I won't die of boredom.
  

  The cat seems to be back to shedding a lot, as I keep finding little clumps of hair in random spots on the carpet. Also the end of my bed, where he likes to sit and also to nap, had a giant pile of cat hair this evening, so I went over the sheet with a lint roller. Tomorrow, assuming there are no power outages, I believe I shall attack my carpets with a vacuum and my carpet-cleaning brush thing. Laundry was done Friday which is good because if it rains I won't want to do that.
  

  Well, that's that for me tonight. Tomorrow is Sunday and then Monday will be a return to Work unless there is a power outage at work. Frank forwarded me an email from the office about hurricane preparedness, which is the same email they sent last year when Irene attacked. If you're on the bottom floor, pick up papers/boxes/etc off the floor in case of floods. If you're on the top floor (I am) make sure no papers or anything are on desks in case the roof leaks. Last year they covered all the computers with plastic bags - don't know if they will do that again, but I'm sure if they did someone covered mine for me. There's also an emergency hotline to call on Monday morning to make sure the office is open. The worst of the weather, last I heard, was scheduled to begin on Monday night, so I'm sure I will have to go in Monday. Whee.
  

  Enjoy the rest of your weekend, folks.
  

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