Thoughts on my art and where it might be going.

Well I've finished my painting and seriously I'm not that happy with it, it just came out flat and lifeless. However it was an amazing learning experience, I especially learned a lot about working with watercolors. I had intended to write another blog going through my process further but I posted my progress at WetCanvas and I think the thread there explains things quite well already, just check it out here

Like I said that painting was a definite learning experience and it's made me rethink my artwork a lot and what direction I want to take it in. If you haven't noticed, recently I haven't been producing any pixel art. Honestly while I enjoy pixel art it just doesn't interest me in the way that it used to and the Pixelation community has become a lot less enjoyable for me. I'm still pixeling, I have to for Shaman but it's not a big focus for me artistically anymore.

More and more I've been drawn to what you could call "traditional media" pencil, pen and ink, watercolor. Not necesarily on purpose that's just where I've been going, like I said pixeling appeals less to me lately and I can't afford a tablet for cg work which does interest me a lot but I can't work with a mouse with any decent control. I guess everyone has to look around for what fits them, and right now it's drawing and painting that fits me.

About my painting, I totally in love with watercolors. I had a rather cheap Reeves set of watercolors and those were nice for playing with but I'm moving up to much better quality paints and just from the little I've worked with them so far there is a huge difference. Thanks to MsLilypond from WetCanvas I have a bunch of tubes of Winsor Newton Cotman and Grumbacher Academy colors, both of these paints are considered student quality which means they are reasonably priced and of decent quality for serious students (Reeves and other cheaper paints are considered Scholastic which are more for kids and school use) so far they are quite nice to use and a huge improvement over the cheaper paints.

However I have 3 other tubes of watercolors that are just amazing M Graham makes proffesional quality watercolor paints and they sent me 3 sample tubes when I wrote to them asking for information about their paints. They outshine my other new paints they are so brilliant in color, and painting with them is amazing. Eventually I'd like to have my whole pallete of colors be M Graham. If you get into watercolors and want to move to a pro paint I've got to recomend them, they are wonderful and the prices aren't bad either from browsing online they seem to range from $4.50-11.00 per 15ml tube.

If you want more info on watercolors handprint.com is an amazing site to check out, it has information on paints, papers, brushes, color mixing, and techniques.