AKA: Cat tries out guoache and falls in love (but it's so tricky when its hot and paint dries instantly help)
As a natural-born perfectionist-procrastinator, I am prone to a very specific danger that haunts me at least once a year; believing I can do anything useful in my vacations. A lie that I’m sure many of you can relate to (and perhaps plenty of you can’t– count yourself lucky, darlings). Every year, I look at the 104 days of summer vacation and concoct some Phineas-and-Ferb-level list of projects and activities that I can surely get done in this endless expanse of free time.
Haha. No.
To excuse my delusion, I’d like to point out that I’m also a friend-diagnosed overworker (it’s like self-diagnosed overworker except instead all my friends are telling me I work too much) which for me entails being absolutely unable to take a break, ever. I make sure to push myself to do nothing from time to time, since I am very aware that working 24/7 is not exactly feasible, nor particularly favorable for my mental health. And so, upon packing for my vacation, I often find myself stuffing my suitcase with sketchbooks and art supplies, pens and electronics– anything that allows me to work on whatever long-forgotten project I’ve convinced myself will finally see the light of day and escape the Sisyphean black hole that is my drafts folder. Often I return home with the majority untouched– or perhaps procured once from their compartment so that I could look at it, decide I wasn’t in the mood, and continue on something entirely unrelated. Sound familiar? Please tell me I’m not the only one with this problem–
Anyway, by some stroke of luck I managed to circumvent that problem on this particular vacation– entirey by accident, really. For starters, I had to bring a smaller bag, so that solved some of my problems. Secondarily, I happened to bring two books that I did not want to read, so some of the choices were taken off the table right off the bat. And then third, I had the incredible blessing of my dear sister, who brought her own paints so that we could work side by side. Every kind of suffering is easier when shared with a likeminded spirit– even the suffering of starting on a project you’re not really in the mood for.
Alright, that’s enough whining about the mental travesties of art-block-esque situations. Let’s get down to the real stuff– the details of the actual artworks!
I had two primary goals with these paintings: 1) practice with interiors and 2) practice with guoache. I haven’t done a lot of drawing interiors yet in my admittedly relatively short career as an artist, so I figured some practice was in order. Luckily for me, I had recently been to an IKEA– those of you familiar with the establishment will know the their stores are filled with little mini-rooms; perfect inspiration for interiors. I’d taken some pictures during my visit, and so I used a selection of these as foundation for the paintings. I could’ve simply copied them, but that felt too cheaty (I know there’s nothing wrong with using references, but copying them perfectly just isn’t my style). So instead, I added one of my characters from Rust & Revolutionaries to each of them. Placing a character in an environment: secret extra practice! Always welcome ;).
As for practicing with the guoache, well– this was one of the first times I was using it at all, so just painting with it was the practice. I did also end up practicing a lot with underpainting in these exercises, which is also a technique I haven’t used before. I used watercolour paints to try and roughly shade the lighting in yellows and blues, and then painted the “true” colours over it with guoache. It worked out better for some than for others, and I didn’t apply the “true” colours to all the paintings either (I quite liked the first one in its more monochrome style).
I did most of my lineart with coloured pencils, but added some heavier lineart with acrylic markers (and even attempted one with pink guoache lineart, as you can see). To the right here you can see the references photos from IKEA that I used, and below you can admire the final results of all four artworks. I had a lot of fun with these, and it was great to be a little more productive for a change! Doing nothing has its charm too, though, and I’m slowly starting to enjoy that more and more. Maybe eventually I’ll learn how to take a break, but at least in the meantime I’m having fun ;P
I hope you enjoyed, and have a lovely day!
–Cat