Fish Out Of Watercolor

Hello there goldfish-rendered-by-me, what do you think of the quality at which you were rendered?

click above for larger view

Junk! Junk, you say? Yeah pretty much.

I felt the urge to experiment with watercolors this past weekend, but all I had were watercolor crayons, and this is what I came up with. First of all, watercolor crayons are, in my opinion, big time cheating. The reason watercolor is tough, is because you have to be able to control/predict the flow of it--but at the same time, you have to go with the flow (literally). At least, this is my understanding of the matter. With watercolor crayons, you just put the color where you want it, and blend it with a wet brush--it takes some control, but not like real watercolor.

This piece was very lightly sketched in pencil (basically I just indicated its silhouette), colored with watercolor crayon, and the black lines were laid down afterwards, with a Sakura brush pen. Clearly, it was rendered without looking at reference of any kind. I'm just practicing, so I did this piece on a scrap of Strathmore watercolor paper--and you can see a vertical crease that goes through the tail.

I enjoy these experimentations, even though the results are sometimes less than spectacular. I'll post watercolor crayon experiment #2 on Friday, which turned out a bit better, in my opinion.