Saturday, April 2, 2011

Spike the watercolor kitty

I'm having a hard time drawing anything besides my cat. But that's okay, right? I'm also having a hard time scanning these watercolor illustrations. I used my scanner at work this time which surprisingly is more craptastic than my "3 in 1" Lexmark printer that I use exclusively for scanning. I don't know, they just don't look very watercolor-y to me. Colored, yes. Watercolor painty, eh? Especially compared to the original, that looks perty and soft and texturey. (sorry for all of the imaginary words). The wrinkled paper makes the color of the paper uneven too. It took a lot of Photoshop to get the whites to look this even. Do people usually photograph their watercolor pieces instead of scanning? I'm not used to these issues, since I usually scan in a black & white drawing and digitally color it. No muss, no fuss. Oh well, I'll keep practicing. Maybe I'll even paint something other than my cat Spike! hmm...maybe my other cat Ein. That's something different, right?....



My giveaway ends in TWO DAYS! I'm so excited to see who wins and what they choose! It's been a lot of fun promoting and really nice to see all of the sweet comments.

4 comments:

O.Pelaez said...

Hmm. Ideally, you want to be using a high grade, thick watercolor paper to avoid the dreaded paper wrinkles. 300lb paper is so nice. I tend to use 150lb paper for most projects and 90lb paper for smaller, quick paintings. Other tips I've heard are to staple and tape your paper to a wooden board, soak the paper with water and let it dry overnight before working on it to let the paper stretch out and relax. I once sent an email to another watercolor artist that I admire, asking her how she got her paintings to scan so well onto the computer. She said that she goes to her local printing shop, where they have huge laser scanners/printers and they tend to pick up the nuances of watercolor a lot better than the average at-home printer/scanner combo. I don't know about the only scanning devices as I use a printer/scanner device, myself. Your cat paintings are very cute.
(sorry for the long ramble ^^)

magicbeanbuyer said...

Thanks for all of your tips! Ramble on! Any bit of info helps. I will admit, I was working on a cheap lightweight paper. It was all I had on hand at the moment, so that's probably part of the problem!

Greener Pastures--A City Girl Goes Country said...

You're having your cat period.

Did you hear about that movie that was all done in watercolors on the computer? It's called "My Dog Tulip." It's playing at the artsy theater down here. It got good reviews here.

magicbeanbuyer said...

lol...eww.

I'll google that movie. Never heard of it. Sounds interesting!