Aaah, got the assignment for this week! Starting to work from the imagination more, however still doing the master studies.

I need to do:

• 25 colour master studies
• 25 imagined full colour sketches (not fully rendered, but I imagine better than 5 minute sketches)
• 1 full colour master study.

I’m determined to do more this week, I didn’t even do one full master study for last week because of how long it was taking me to do the colour studies. Maybe if I go an restock on acrylics tomorrow I’ll be able to do them quicker. Either way, I’m not going to feel guilty about it anymore, as I learnt a lot, I may not have done as much as I could have, but I’m working double duty with learning how to mix paints and improving my painting skills on top of these studies. I can see how working digitally makes this process slightly easier (for one, not having to mix you own paint and not worrying about colours mixing together where you don’t want them to etc) but even then it’s only that, doing these would be challenging if I was working digitally or not. Still, I work traditionally, I need to stop comparing my work to the great digital work I see others in the group doing, as it’s two different ways of working.

These colour studies aren’t getting anny easier, I think it’ll be an all nighter tonight trying to get more done. Three hours to do three studies is abysmal, but most of that was spent mixing those darn paints, to have them dry lighter anyway. I need to start on my master study as well, focusing on one may be the best bet here, with time running out.

Do not give up. Do not give up. I’m struggling because it’s new, it’ll get better if I practice.

Sorry that I keep posting about this, but mixing these colours is much harder than I anticipated. I had to stick with watercolours in the end as I don’t have the right acrylic colours I’d need to even have a full palette to mix colours with. Still, I now know how to mix desaturated colours, I didn’t know that an hour ago!

I think my decision to use watercolours for these colour studies was a poor one, too. I think it adds too many elements to an already challenging process, such as having to work dark to light, making sure there’s enough pigment mixed in, bleeding etc. I just chose them as I used to have watercolour classes, even though they were 10 years ago I still remember a lot of it. Maybe I should get the acrylics out… yes.

Ok, doing these colour studies has made me realise how little I know about colour, and mixing the right hues/values of paint. I thought it’d be better to try to mix the colours I need myself instead of trying to find a paint that’s almost the same colour - I wouldn’t learn from that. Challenging? definitely. Do I want to give up? No. I want to do these!