More cloud practice and a character drawing

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I’m working on my clouds again. Enough said about that. Today I practiced going into the wet and erasing the blue. I saw this technique on the ArtTutor Youtube channel.

Erasing the blue is far easier than protecting the whites.

For some reason painting this single cloud was very tiring, so I decided that I should reward myself by drawing a jaybird about to fall down our chimney. Every Fall one of these little guys seems to think it’s a good idea to go down our narrow chimney pipe to do some exploring. The trouble starts once they’re in the chimney and then find out and they can’t open their wings to fly out. They end up clattering around inside the damper, and then the soot up the living room when we open it and set them free. They last guy couldn’t figure out that the front door was wide open for him so he sat on the curtain rod of an hour or two then left without even saying “thank you.”

Down he goes.

Real cheap but okay watercolor paint set

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I bought the U.S. Art Supply 36 color watercolor pan set for $7.99. I thought it was charming. I could look at every color and know exactly what color it would be when I painted with it. On the other hand, artist quality paint like Daniel Smith yellow ochre ($10.46) is so pigment rich that most colors are unidentifiable in the palette — I need a color card just to know what the colors are.

The U.S. Art Supply watercolor pan set claims to be safe for ages 3 to infinity, so I feel that I’m their target customer. By the way, there are lots of vendors selling this product under various branding and prices. I looked around and bought the cheapest.

UPDATE: It turns out that these cheap paints are abrasive enough to chew up synthetic brushes. Once again a truism is proven to be true: you get what you pay for. Caveat emptor!

The colors are a little intensified by my scanner, and Photoshop’s wonderful multiply mode. Even without enhancement, the colors look good to my eye.