Cute fish

Cute fish

Do you remember those watercolours which you had to use at school? Here in Germany we call them "Deckfarben" which means "paints that cover" or "opaque watercolours". They are a bit similar to Gouache paints but of course are lower in quality. A few days ago I was going through my art stuff in search for a certain medium and I found actually two sets of those school watercolour paints, each of them having 24 round pans. I love to experiment and try out things so I decided to have a go with them, in spite of the fact that I did not like them at all at school. 

However I found out that I was having a lot of fun. Actually I enjoyed not having to handle with tubes. The fish above was done with the set carrying the no-name name of Regina (I really do not remember when and where I got them). The paints were rather gouache-y, and easy to mix with another and with the opaque white in the tube. 

 

Strange face

Face

I did this strange face with Gouache. When I began with the painting I just put one blob of paint beneath the other, and in the end, I noticed that I could turn the abstract painting into something face-like. It looks a bit battered and distorted, yes, but it still reminds me of a face.

 

Cute Christmas Owl

 

Whimsical Christmas Owl Mug
by ullahennig

At first there was the failed Inkscape drawing of a bird. I had tried something new, failed to create the design in the way I wanted it to be and then left it unfinished and forgotten on my hard drive. Months later with a bit more experience with Inkscape and the help of a few YouTube videos I gave it a new try. The result was a cute owl, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas. Then I thought it could look nice with one of these Christmas hats, and maybe a kind of red coat on. You can see the result of my work above. 

Fall leaves

Fall leaves, painted with Gouache

Although a set of gouache paints was the first set of paints I bought in 2009 or so it took me a long time to get familiar with this medium. In fact I tried them once or twice, was not very happy with them and then forgot them. Now, more than 10 years later I kind of rediscovered them and liked them. I liked them because I could practise color mixing with them without running the danger to have them drying out on my palette in a short time. And they are rewettable, although with a bit of a loss of covering quality.

 

On the Swabian Alb

Diaslide from the 60s

Long time ago taking photos as diaslides was the state of the art. I remember days when friends came to my parents' home and my father proudly presented the diaslides he had taken through our summer vacation. This one above was not taken during our summer vacations which usually were spent either in Austria or in Italy. It was taken on one of our precious weekend trips to the Swabian Alb. More than once the trip also meant lighting up a campfire and roasting those delicious German sausages.

I inherited a big container with those diaslides when my parents had died, and going through them and deciding which ones to digitalize still is one of my projects. Some I keep because they are excellent photos - some I keep because of the memory they bring to me.

 

Tree character done with Inkscape

Tree character

Some time ago I thought that doing traditional paintings or drawings and doing digital art with Inkscape are opposite to each other. You can do either the one or the other. I do not think anymore that it is true. The origin of this tree character was a sketch done with pencil and then a gouache painting. But I wanted to go a step further and create a digital piece out of it. I scanned it in, openened it in Inkscape and the result of this doing is what you can see above. It is not a copy, it it something different, but it definitely has its origins in traditional art.

 

Back again!

 Yes, I am back again. It is now the middle of August. While I have been absent from this blog I haven't stopped doing art, be it traditional or digital. I have painted with gouache, done some acrylic paintings and enjoyed drawing with markers. 

Abstract painting done with Acrylics

Lately I focussed on doing digital illustrations with Inkscape, and one of the results of this is this cute little cat:

Black cat drawn with Inkscape

And I have started being active on Zazzle again. 

Two cute dark cats
by ullahennig