Wednesday, October 21, 2015

market makings // pumpkins and teacups // watercolor

Whew.

   It's been a while since I've actually posted any of my artwork, much less the more traditional, not fanart kind. But here we go! And there's a little story to go with it, too :)


   Okay, so almost every year my church holds an event called "Christmas in October", which is a money raising event for our missionaries. We send them money for Christmas early, as in October. Usually, we just donate for certain needs each missionary has. But this time, people in our church are selling their handiwork and donating the money they get from it. The event is being called Market for Missions.

   Willow is sewing five doll dresses, and I did six watercolors in frames I got from church. It took me... well, forever. Our art teacher brought some pumpkins, and I did watercolors of those. The first two are of the same pumpkins, but colored differently.

Which one do you like better, out of the two of them?


   I liked this one at first. I was happy with the tiny pumpkin and the long red and yellow one, but the background wasn't as I imagined it. But my art teacher helped me lighten it up, so I'm pretty happy with it now.


   I'm very happy with those pumpkins. It's funny, 'cause I was frustrated with the watercolor below (more specifically, the plump one on the right), so I redrew them and worked on it instead. That's how I ended up with two from the same reference.


   I'm more happy with this background, but the pumpkins are more realistically colored, so they're not as appealing to me.


   And now that I look at it, that pumpkin is kinda small... huh. Well, nothing I can do about it now!


   I was inspired to do these teacups by a birthday card I made for a friend, which was really fun to watercolor. But because I wanted to match the frame with the coloring, I chose different cups to paint than I did on the card, which changed everything. I set the stack on a bunch of books as a reference and started drawing them out. I'm not completely satisfied with it, but it's good enough to be called done.


   The middle teacup was the most fun to watercolor. I loved doing the sporadic flowers and greenery, which were more suggested than detailed.


   I've painted this bottom cup before, my first finished watercolor, actually :) It's my mom's Danish cup, so it has some sentimental value to it also. Personally, I love Danish cups. They're so pretty and blue, that really made me happy with it.


   Anyway, this top teacup was the hardest, and is the one I'm not very pleased with. It didn't end up like I had imagined it. It's a Russian cup, and I wanted to show the gold embellishment on the inside, which is why it's on the top. I don't think it's separated enough from the middle cup, which is probably because of the gold paint I used on them were the same.


My art teacher asked me to pick out a few little frames to paint tiny pictures in, seen above. Three was good enough for me, and my favorite is the one in the middle. I didn't use a reference for any of these.


I don't like this one as much because it the experiment, the first one I painted. Smack-dab in the middle, too.


This one was more Halloween inspired, with the clouds and moon like that.


This one's my favorite because of how the colors work together. Very happy with it.


Close-up for close-up sake... Oh, and I used a pen to outline them rather sloppily, to look more artsy or something ;)

Whew! That's six watercolors for one event. I have no idea if they'll sell, but I'll let you know if they do. Do you guys have a favorite? Comment below if you do!

Thanks for reading, guys!

Sincerely,
Darrion

7 comments:

  1. These are amazing, Darrion! Seriously, these are all very good! Something you see in famous museums!
    The tea cups are beautiful and the pumpkins are so life like- I love them all! :)
    -A

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  2. These are so realistic and amazing! I'm in love with the tea cups;)

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  3. Oh! Also, what do you use to edit your photos? :) Is it free and laptop available or..? Thanks!
    -A

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    1. I use a site called Picmonkey (www.picmonkey.com), which is free, but my sister and I bought the 'royale' feature which gives you a lot of extra helpful edits to use in addition to the free edits on there. We also have Photoshop, but it's complicated and Picmonkey is a lot easier and cheaper to use :) I have no idea if it works well on a laptop, but it's quick on our computer (and did I mention it was free? ;). Hope that was helpful! If you'd like, I could do post about it, explaining my editing process better..?

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  4. Oh, if you could, that would be super helpful! :) I might try it after asking my Mama, but if I knew what I was doing first... ;) If you want, I'd like that! :) Thanks again!
    -A

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Thank you for commenting! I love comments, so feel free to leave as many as you like, but keep it clean, please.
~Darrion~