That’s the thought that popped into my head just before I started writing this. It was triggered by what I was going to do and then decided not to do just yet, because I need to learn how to do something. Or at least figure it out and I wasn’t ready to commit the time. So, I’m writing this. Yes, this is just a different time commitment.
What I was getting ready to do was to edit together some video of me working on a piece of art. But I realized that I might need to do the tutorial that popped up when I opened the software. Now, I haven’t started editing the video so I can’t really tell you about that. I can tell you about what I was working on when I recorded the video and why I recorded the video. So here goes.
I’ve been wanting to capture video of me working on one of my art pieces. But I tend to sit down at odd times thinking I’ll just do a little bit and tweak one or two things and the next thing I know I’ve spent two hours and I’m so far along that it doesn’t seem worth it to try to get video. I’ll probably change how I feel about that in the future but up to now, that’s how I’ve been thinking. This time though, I did things a little different.
I don’t have all of every single moment from the sketch to the end of the painting in video. I do have pictures of some planning sketches and then the piece with the outline done and then video of me working on different areas or aspects of the painting. I tried to make sure I was getting key segments so that it was really illustrative of the process of making this painting.
The painting I was working on while I recorded the video was my painting of multiple candy canes laying around and over-lapping on a green background. It’s a holiday type design that I wanted to try to do. Because, over-lapping red and white twisties in the shape of canes seems like a fun challenge to map out and try to make sense of. And that it was. But it wasn’t the first candy cane painting I did this year.
I thought I had all my holiday paintings done. They were all done around Halloween so I was planning on working on other stuff. Until. One of my friends asked if I was working on any more holiday paintings. Since I wasn’t I asked if there was something he’d like to see and he suggested a candy cane like the one of the piece of candy corn. Ok.
So I did a rough sketch and it came out pretty good so I tried again in watercolor because it seemed like a good medium. And I really like the way that one came out. At first it was just the candy cane on a white background but it wasn’t quite done, to me. So I added a little shadow. I like the way it came out. I also tried the candy cane in pastel. That turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected. The pastel dust from the read kept getting everywhere and the white just couldn’t keep up at times. It was messy. It still turned out pretty good. I might have stopped there.
Except. When I posted the watercolor candy cane on social media, before I added the shadow, I got a comment that I should do a painting with more than one candy cane. And of course I responded that that was not the request. It did get me to thinking though. And I decided I wanted to go a bit more over the top with a many candy cane painting. So I put some thought into what might work and even tried sketching out a couple of the ideas before settling on the design I chose.
And then after I started painting in the red stripes it occurred to me that it might be cool to capture the process of this painting. I did it mostly for fun and to see how people like it. I also did it because I know that I don’t paint watercolors as watercolors. I generally paint them more like a gauche, acrylic, or even oil, to some extent. And that’s because I don’t generally use washes and thin color. I prefer my color to be deep, rich, and vibrant which I suspect makes my watercolor a little of an different thing. Though maybe not. I’ve seen some amazing watercolor that is rich and deep and lush.
Of course, now that the painting is complete and ready to go to the photographer, I have video that needs to be edited together with some photos and I want to do some voice over for it to talk a little about it as I go. I’ve got about two hours of video to work with so I’m hopeful I can put together something that will be a little interesting. So, yes. Video is coming. I will post about it when it’s ready. Cheers!