I have this painting I’m working on that isn’t going as I had envisioned. And not really in a good way. It’s a little frustrating and disappointing. And yet, I still keep working on it, because I keep learning things from the bits I keep touching.
The painting is from a photo I took of a taekwondo action shot. I have been doing these as sketches and then sometimes as pastel paintings. But I had just finished a small pastel and cleaned up the studio and wasn’t too keen on making a mess again or the feel of the pastel in my fingers, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it in pastel. I have created several watercolor paintings recently that I really enjoyed making, one included cloth even. So I wondered if I could do the taekwondo piece in watercolor.
I sketched it in using water soluble graphite. I started with a basic black one and didn’t like the way it was behaving so I tried the Technalo pencil and stick that I got at the Caran d’Ache store when I was in Berlin. I liked the feel of it on the paper better. The ones I have are the blue tint which should work well since most of the taekwondo images have a blue tinge due to the light reflecting off the blue mat that everyone is standing on. This worked well mostly but also not quite. The failure was due to the paper behavior not the pencil, or stick.
I wanted enough room on the paper to get the whole body on the page because it is all required to show the action. Fortunately I had a piece already taped up to a board. Unfortunately, for that size the only type of paper I have for watercolor is cold press. Cold press watercolor paper tends to have a divot sort of texture. I expect that they are meant to hold the water and the paint like little puddles or wells. Sometimes I don’t care about this and sometimes, ok a lot of times, I do care. And when it comes to pencil work on this type of paper it can be frustrating. Especially coming from a pencil drawing background. No matter the care or effort I make to get things to look nice and smooth, it always feels sloppy to me.
Still, I was able to get the sketch down and then some shading in with the stick. I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted to do some of the shading and then add the color over the top. My thought being that it could give it a little more depth or maybe drama. Overall the idea was sound. There are a couple of areas where it really did add to and enhance the painting. I’m quite pleased with that.
There were a couple of areas I struggled with when doing the sketch. The proportions looked off, and then when I measured them they were correct. But it still looked weird I decided that maybe when I added the paint and the shading that would fix it. Yeah, not so much. I have one area that no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get it right, but the proportions seemed to line up so I just plowed ahead. In retrospect this is not the right thing to do. I also have one spot that I failed to read the image correctly and so I have a place where there should be more uniform, that is white, than what is there. Unfortunately, at a certain point this becomes irreparable. Because, watercolor.
Once I “finished” painting the main figure I decided it was time to add the background and use that to help tidy up some of the edges. The interesting thing was that I really liked the way the figure stood out against the white of the paper so it was hard to decide what to do for the background. I decided I needed the blue of the mat, hoping I could show the difference of the feet, one digging into the mat and the other poised in the air at the start of the jump. I also didn’t want to use light colors for the background because the figure is light and I didn’t want it to get lost. The mat thing wasn’t working so I finally decided on a darker, richer background. The good and bad of that decision is that it highlighted some real deficiencies in the painting.
With the darker background in place I was able to see some things I could fix, and make better. Hooray. There are still some areas I’m just not sure I can do anything about. I have it sitting next to my desk while I work on some other pieces and once in a while I will see something that needs a tweak and I’ll stop and make the adjustment. It does make a difference. But I don’t expect any of the tweaks I might make to make me decide to put it up on my store. I do not consider it a waste though. I have learned a lot from this painting.
The first, most important thing I have learned is to slow down with the base sketch. Get it right, whatever that is for me, and make sure the sketch really shows what it is I’m trying to convey. For what I’m doing, if the sketch isn’t right, I’m not going to get the painting right. Watercolor is not very forgiving in that regard. So it has got to be right. I’ve also figure out or learned to be bold with my darks and shadows. Not because it’s watercolor and I was trying to create a soft, dreamy watercolor painting. More that I just forget to drive the darks back. And I think I’m afraid I’ll get too much color on the page if I do that because of trying to smooth out shading and folds. I’ve got a better handle on how to do that, thanks to the work on this painting. And I expect as I do more of it I will get better at it. Another thing I have learned is that I need to restock my watercolors. I plan on doing a few more watercolor paintings and as you might notice, I sort of abuse watercolor in many ways. I intend to keep doing that but that does require a fair bit of paint to get the depth and richness of color that I prefer.
Originally, when I first realized the painting wasn’t going to be what I wanted it to be I thought I would just start over and try again, with the same pose. As I’ve spent time looking at it and trying to figure out what was ‘wrong’ with it and how to ‘fix’ it I realized that part of my disappointment is that it doesn’t show what I could see and what I wanted. There is movement, but it doesn’t show the dynamics of what is about to happen. I’m not sure that I can convey that through this pose. There isn’t enough tension in the back leg and the twist in the body hasn’t quite got there. So, I won’t do this one again. I will chose a different action shot for the next taekwondo painting. I am going to try it in watercolor again because I really like the potential of it right now and I want to see where it takes me.
I have another painting in the beginnings. I’ve just finished the sketch for it. I took my time with it and now I’m going to sit it to the side where I can look at it for a while before I start the paint. I have another picture in mind I want to do and I might start the sketch on that one while I look at this one. I’m not sure yet. And I’m working on some stuff for a whole different project I want to do but I don’t expect to have anything more to share on that one for quite a while. The good news is that since I’ll be doing a lot of pencil work for that, my sketches for my other paintings, should get better and faster, I hope.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Cheers!