Testing out Rives BFK

I ran out of large sheets of the usual paper I paint on (Arches watercolor, hotpress) so I decided to experiment with some of the Rives BFK sheets I have. I cut a large square into quarters and had 4 sheets of about 7 inches across, which is a nice change. The last painting I did was much larger and I ended up getting bored with the work halfway through. Eventually it was finished but I feel like I could have learned the same things if it was half the size. So this time around I wanted to do a few smaller, quicker works.

Working on this paper was very different from my usual technique. Since I was working on printmaking paper rather than watercolor paper, I found that I couldn't glaze colors as effectively since the paper just soaked everything up and turned dark whenever water was applied, making it difficult to judge how much paint I should put down.

Although I'm not too happy with these results and wont use this paper for painting, I feel like I've learned something. What that something is I can't really tell yet, haha.

A self portrait in acrylic which I edited slightly in photoshop. The original is less vibrant.

I had such high hopes for this rooster! I really liked the drawing and I feel like the way I ended up painting him takes away from his character somehow. I might re-do this one when I get good paper again because roosters are awesome.

This was painted with flat colors to counter the rooster image. I wanted to have minimal shading and leave it very flat. It looks more like my older digital work, which is what I was going for. The gradient was added in photoshop.

speedpaints

Some recent photoshop speedpaints. It feels like its been years since I painted digitally! I really just wanted to aimlessly mess around with colors.