✨PRACTICE✨ painting process pics! (Patreon)

Hey Art Nerds! Here's a bunch of step-by-step photos I took of some little practice paintings in San Diego. I call them "practice paintings" because then the fuck-ups aren't embarrassing, they're just a praaaaactice.

Let's start with Stop Sign Cactus Pic here.

I started with a pretty decent sketch, re-drew the lines in colored pencil, and then immediately ATE SHIT when I started in on the stop sign.

It wasn't my fault! I brought this set of expensive travel brushes and man, I don't wanna shit on my favorite brush brand, but: the smallest brush, the size 4, had two stray strands that weren't trimmed properly and totally fucked my control. I used some tiny scissors to trim 'em, and BAM, worked perfectly after that.

(Still, who STARTS with the most difficult part? You need to WARM UP before you paint straight-line letters, man! So, it was partially my fault.)

Here you can see where I tried to hide the fucked-up stop sign using the shadow from-- wait what am I doing, stop looking at the stop sign, just look at the pretty colors in the plants.

In the end, I decided to try the white paint in my Inktense set and, y'know, it didn't do the worst job on that O.

Didn't fix the wonky sign edge, buuuuut it's a praaaaactice.

Adam and I came across a charming Free Art Library in his neighborhood and I couldn't resist doing a little painting to put inside it. But this one... woof, I almost tossed it. You'll see.

I loved these scraggly pine trees.

It doesn't look terrible in the photo, but... the blue sky was just so primary and dark. A real straight-out-of-the-tube color compared to the other colors going on in there.

BUT! After playing with that white paint, I had an idea.

Covered it all with white, and then a muted turquoise on top of that once the white dried. It worked! I liked it enough to pop it into the little mini gallery. You can see it on the left. Real smol.

Last one was kinda simple, but also fun. Look at this soft cactus!

Just kidding it is NOT SOFT!! Don't touch it!

But it's real fun to draw, so I did.

I almost never use white paint in from a watercolor pan, but, can confirm: white Inktense is fun and actually shows up on top of the regular colors.

So I guess this was mostly a practice in using white paint in watercolor.

Alright, that's all I wanted to share. :) Thanks for letting me show you my relaxing vacation paintings, wobbly lines and fucked up lettering and all!