series of watercolor & pencil drawings

Creative Process of The series of pencil and watercolor drawings

I did this series of drawings with the purpose of showing kind of the same expressions, in different girls. What these girls are showing would be nostalgic, thoughtful, fearful and even “suffering” expressions. I prefer drawing this kind of style as i consider it to be more realistic and human, as sometimes we show some things to the world when we are really going through the opposite. This series isn´t about hiding behind appearances, it´s all about taking that mask off, and showing the truth. Plus i consider much more interesting and mysterious drawings that express this, rather than only drawing happy faces (Anyways that´s just my opinion). I mostly focalize on making the eye the more realistic i can, as it´s the part of the face i find more interesting and deep, and it can really contrast the expression of the person.

The techniques i used, to give an introduction, were watercolor and black pencil. I chose them as they are the ones i like working with, because for example with watercolor, most of the times, it shows a more surrealistic meaning, and you can do figures with it representing different “feelings”, like if you draw with blue it has a more sad atmosphere, and red a more mysterious one, yellow a happy one, and etc. And black pencil, is just easy to use sometimes, and i can make with less difficulty more realistic drawings, as i can enter more into the detail part with it.

WATERCOLOR PAINTINGS

The two watercolor drawings i made, i painted them in a paper of 350 g, i think, which is what i prefer as i use a nice amount of water. Of course the amount of cotton the paper has, is very important so it absorbs more the water, letting me work even better. I used winsor and newton watercolors as they are known to be a very good brand, and with that quality i can make more of “special effects” with it. The bad thing is that watercolor is a pretty difficult technique to use, so it´s harder to make a realistic style, that´s why my drawings look how they look, i mean they are imitating a realistic style, but they aren´t totally being it. I use a lot a white gel pen, to highlight some parts of the face, cause i can control it easier than white paint. I consider that the first drawing is better, because it has more volume, leading to a more realistic effect, i guess that to make this effect you should add many layers of light colors, which then form naturally darker ones, not putting directly a dark color, because once you go wrong with that, you really can´t take it back, because even though you add to it water to make it fade, there is always a part of it that remains the same. As you can see the palette of colors i like to use are mostly redish, pink, purple, brown and blue colors/tones, and for the eyes i always do them as light as i can so they contrast a lot. Another thing to be careful about is to not add an extreme amount of layers, firstly because it can just break the paper and secondly it´s starts producing “dirty” tones, which are not nice, yet also make more realistic effect, so it can sometimes be a win-win situation, but it depends. Unfortunately i couldn´t do figures with the watercolor in these drawings, because every time i tried, they looked not so good, and after all that trying and failing to do it, i decided to simply not include it in this project, until i get the hand of it. But this can be for a reason which would be that my paper didn´t really have cotton so it didn´t absorb well when i put a lot of water, and part of the process of making a good figure is using water to make it blend.

PENCIL DRAWINGS

I made realistic drawings which i made with black pencils of 2B, 4B, 6B,2H and many more, i included a blender (which is like a type of paper all rolled up), a white gel pen, a soft paper to blend bigger parts, colored prismacolor pencils, and finally some basic tools such as an eraser and a sharpener. What i did in all of these drawings in this collection were girls with a similar facial expression, i copied them from photographs i browsed in the internet of some models i know, except for one that is invented. I usually use the picture as a reference to copy some gestures and shadows, but the face is never the same, and i also don´t really intend it to be. I just wan´t a picture to copy the idea of the person, not the actual one, because photography is for that job.

Usually what i like to do is to darken the outer-lines of the eyes for them to stand out more, i don't put very dark tones in the shadow parts for the drawing to maintain a more natural look. We all know, too much contrast is unreal. The hair is not the easiest part to do, because when i do it too dark it looks fake, and if i do it light then it looks more natural but the face highlights less. So there is a need to think how to maintain a balance between those two items. A way to do it is to blend with a softer color all the hair and then erase the lighter parts in a form of hair ( a curved line) and them shadow a bit some darker parts, in that way if will look more natural.

I decided to make some drawings that weren't very detailed, i mean with a more "faded" technique, just to work with lights and shadows, and not sharpen the edges, but make them fade. I liked this form of drawing as you don't have to put much time on it, it's not detailed but it has a realistic effect, made "without even trying", just playing with the shadows and that's it.

COMBINATION DRAWINGS

COLORED AND BLACK PENCIL:

I made this drawing with the simple "not detailed and faded" technique, because i wasn't sure if this combination would function for me, and as this drawing i did it quickly, then if i ruined it, it wouldn't be so frustrating, and i wouldn't feel like i wasted time in drawing the woman. But i definitely saw good results with this mixture, i did the "watercolor imitation figure in color" kind of translucent in some parts, to give it the "layer effect" of the real water. This can be a good way to make watercolor figures (in pencil), in a more controlled way, this way the water doesn't steal the effect you wanted to provide, cause you are making it just the way you want it to be. Plus it adds a nice decoration in the drawing or the figure can have a symbolic meaning. In my case, the face i drew has a "suffering" expression, and as you can tell my figure in color could look like a brain, maybe, and it's getting outside of her head, so the title of the drawing is "Overthinking", which can lead to more pain and suffering. So my point with this, is that the expression of the woman didn't said good things about her, but adding the figure, i could represent more clearly that she was suffering due to her overthinking.

PENCIL AND WATERCOLOR COMBINATION

In this case I drew the woman in black pencil in a watercolor paper that have a big percentage of cotton because i wanted to make a watercolor figure. So i first did the drawing and over that i did the watercolor 'thing', which would be a wide line that follows from an extreme of the paper to another. I did this because i could do a "more realistic" drawing with pencil as it's easier to control than watercolor, focalizing in details (which in this case i didn't as i was just trying). Over that, i could just play with the watercolor effects, so it's a combination of real and unreal.