CSS? CSS!

On a completely different note, having failed to grasp CSS back in 1999, the fact I can get AI to tweak this diary to look the way I want it to makes me disproportionally pleased.

That practice book just... happened

It's been a while since I stayed up doing stuff full-steam through the night, not for lack of having stuff to be excited about, but thanks to having a normative sleep cycle (more on that another time, maybe). But it's five in the morning, and I've been playing with paint and pens all night, and it fills me with happiness. 

'What is it good for?' asks dad's voice in my head. Dad died last year, but his comments live rent-free in there. Well, dad, it's good for my happiness. It makes me happy. It fills me with joy and purpose and it feels like some external being is driving my hands to make things, and doesn't bother consulting my mind about it. In short, dad, it's excitement and inspiration. And fun.

The other week I needed to test some very low-quality watercolor ink, which I did in a very low-quality watercolor sketchbook I had lying around since the days I knew even less about watercolor paper. Once that was tested (vibrant, staining, probably as lightfast as a puddle in the Sahara), used it to test some gold powder; the following day was playing with paint and relaxing without thinking about the result so naturally that was done in that same sketchbook, because why waste expensive Baohong paper on doodles; then some experiments with brush lettering, bound to fail so that cheap book was the choice again; then before I knew it I had filled ten spreads in one week. 

Turns out it's very liberating to work on cheap paper with cheap paints, because I worry less about producing something impressive, and just... learn. It's exactly the same as it was when I was 25 and got a super-sucky sketchbook to doodle anatomy with red pencil in; it made my technique rocket. I've no idea why I didn't do that earlier with the watercolor. 

Perhaps because watercolor does depend a whole lot on high-quality paper, so there's stuff it's silly to practice on wood-pulp paper - like diffusions, gradients, delicate blending, anything accurate or that requires vibrant colors. But for stuff like analyzing leaf shapes, or the structure of a letter / animal / plant, it's great. I even tried some gimmicky stuff in it, like splatters or overlaying watercolor pencils on the painting. I think that, playing in that lousy sketchbook this week, I figured out more things than I usually do in two months. 

And it's such good practice, too! Suddenly I'm implementing techniques I knew but never had the chance to try, because they're too scary to use on expensive paper. This feels very satisfying, and makes me very happy.

--

On another note, my Instagram feed is swamped with autumn-themed art, from fiery leaves to scarves and tea to all things Halloween. In this country September is still summer, which is my favorite season; ample light, comfortable light clothes, the pool when I dare, and not being cold. That whole autumn celebration exploding on September 1st feels like an offence to the cheery 32 Celsius out the window, so here's today's doodle - it's actually practicing single brushstroke leaves, but apparently my seasonal agenda needed an outlet.

--

And last - that brush lettering attempt. 

When I was 16 mum caught me painting at 3AM and was displeased, but I was so excited about heavens-knows-what-it-was. That scene repeated for years with minute variations, and the core of it was that the excitement kept me from falling asleep, even if I was knackered. It was drawing, then painting, then writing roleplaying stories, then LARPing, then digital painting, sewing, Blender, coaching, and now painting again. And it's half past five in the morning, and it's been around a year of being so excited about watercolor that it's the thing I imagine while I'm falling asleep. Just like with Blender before, sleep is upsetting because it keeps me from doing that thing, that... obsession. And the obsession has many facets (if you ever did Blender you know what I mean) and I want to try all of them, right now, and it's fun but also frustrating and unhealthy and sometimes it feels like I'm being chased by a non-lethal wall of fire. I'm not sure what will happen when that wall of fire catches up with me; the inspiration will fade, perhaps? It feels as if... there's limited time, and so much I want to experiment with. It doesn't matter that the result is sucky; it's the doing it that matters.

So brush lettering. 

 --

So that book suddenly needed a name; it had turned from 'donate this' to a wonderful creativity engine. Even, or because, it's full of crappy art. 

The last one is called Belvane's Book of Blunders, so there's a convention to follow. And I had an excuse to fill that first page, and to spend two full hours on the absolutely useless, delightful attempt to write that font with my own hand, with pen on paper. What's that good for? Nothing, dad. Nothing but having fun. I know fun doesn't count for anything, but since you're not around to do much about it, then useless fun with calligraphy I will have. 

Life is currently quite nice. I rather wish I was a believer so I could thank someone for that.  

Finally managed diffusions with wet on wet! And some life updates

 

It's been five months since last I felt the need to write something public. Perhaps that's because my regular, private diary satisfies most of the thought-organization need; or perhaps because there's too many social media channels for my taste, and it feels like either a job or advertisement, not sharing my thoughts.

Anything about life, Blender and such is at the end of this post; the rest is me being excited about watercolor.

Watercolor excitement

But today I really want to share excitement about a technical art discovery, just like I used to feel when I regularly did Blender. So I'm still obsessed with watercolor, and it's nearly a year now, and I enjoy plodding my way through figuring it out without any clear goal except enjoying the challenge. And one of the constant challenges was that I couldn't keep the paint on the paper wet. All the books and tutorials show beautiful diffusions of one paint blending into another, of different transparencies with the same color, and mine, no matter how fast I worked, got dry withing seconds, not minutes. Ten, fifteen seconds tops.

Imagine, in a tutorial: the painter draws a wet brush with green to paint a thin stalk, washes the brush a bit and extends tine branches from that stalk, which come out a charming, transparent green and blend in a gradient. They then touch the split points with a brush thick with pigment, which explodes in the wet water channel painted on the paper to deepen that area with a new color, seamlessly blending with the existing ones. Like the yellow in this moment, in this tutorial.

Having failed at that for around four months, and came up with various theories as to the reason, I finally managed it! So the reason is, as expected, the fact that I live in a very dry area (the Middle East) compared to where most of the tutorials and books are made (Western Europe or the more European-weather of the US). I also have constant air condition in my study, so it's all very dry.

The solution was two things!

1. Blending Medium. It kept the paint mixture wet for longer, but also made it sluggish; took me a while to realize I need to mix it with water (1:1) and dip my brush in that before I pick up the paint. 
2. Having painted my first wet layer with that mixture, I recently learnt that if my brush isn't wet enough - aka doesn't have enough water on it, not only wet pigment - the paint just won't travel! Even if I touch the brush to a pre-wet, Blending-Mediumed layer on my paper!

As soon as I had the right water-medium ratio on my paper, and the right amount of water on my brush, the paint exploded pleasingly in it, and the base layer remained wet for around a minute - still not close to how the tutorials people have it, but plenty of time to create the gorgeous diffusions I was smitten with. The first that caught my eye (and heart!) with this was Mirglis - look at those diffusions! The tension in my shoulders fades just looking at that:

Art by Mirglis, aka Sarah Van Der Linden

So I'm excited and happy and I want to be painting 24/7, that is, I spend 100% of my waking hours wishing I was painting with watercolor.

Anything which isn't watercolor - Blender, life and everything

I miss Blender, but I'm so obsessed with watercolor that there's no time left for Blendering. Between sharing a house with my man and his two kids, to being bedridden around 70% of every day (I'd rather not go into that), there's around 4 hours a day for me to do anything in - including cooking, showering and spending time with my man. I even joined a Warcraft guild, which had a super-nice leader and some people I wish I had more time to get to know, but... no time.

I miss Blender; I miss my Blender community even more. I feel that I let them down by not resuming regular streaming. But so little time, and right now my enthusiasm burns, the way it can only burn for ADHD people with hyperfocus, for watercolor. 

Life is very good. Having started doing Pilates thrice a week, a lot of physical problems just vanished! Including the limp from that leg surgery in Thailand in 2023, can you believe it? As long as I do Pilates, the pain doesn't return and not only can I walk normally, I even chug the staircases on the house with no effort. I can bend and move and rotate and twist and it's like someone shaved 20 years off my body, despite the obesity.

About the obesity - something wonderful happened; I learnt to accept it. It's like magic. I can't say I'm thrilled to be 150kgs, but I don't feel mortally ashamed about it anymore, and last month I even wore a swimsuit in public for three hours and forgot about my body, just enjoyed the pool, the sun, and making loads of conversation with strangers. 

Mounjaro, the weight-keeping injection, makes me nauseated and sleepy for two days each week, and costs 350€ a month, and it's still a blessing. When I was 170 kgs I couldn't handle basic bodily functions and was miserable to no end. Those 20 kgs that the injections peeled off me, combined with Pilates, gave me my well-being back. 

--

If all goes well, in three weeks the man and I will do the signing of legal papers that declare us married (for all practical purposes). Since the divorce from the last one has been dragging since 2018 and isn't done yet, there might be a situation where I can say I have a harem! With two intelligent, hilarious, talented, beautiful, geeky men I'm married to! I don't think I ever imagined that kind of situation. And I really hope the divorce is done at some point soon; it seems both the ex and I are displeased with how long the legal part is taking. 

--

There's a cat. I'm sure I wrote about that in the past. His name is Charles Weasley-Xavier, because he's a paraplegic ginger with an attitude and no brain. He's also paranoid. I'd have never taken in a pet, as it wrecks my heart when they die (lesson learnt from the family cat passing when I was 11), but since I moved into a house with a cat I just have to accept it, and gods above, the amount of joy that derpy, brainless cat brings into my life is off the scale. In the past two months we got him sleeping with us in bed at night, and falling asleep with a purring cat next to my face, under my hand, is another kind of joy entirely. 

Charlie can't evacuate his bladder and bowels on his own, so boyfriend manually empties him once a day; at night we put a diaper on him, since that one time we discovered that, while he sleeps and dreams, he actually does pee. It's a spray, really. Right on my face. It was either cry of laugh, so I'm laughing. 

He's my Smol Happiness. Boyfriend is Tall happiness. And life... life is just good.

--

It's peaceful. It's fulfilling. I laugh endlessly, because boyfriend is hilarious. I'm at peace with my body. My health is annoying on the well-being front but it's not dangerous nor suffering, and, being 50 and obese, I'm grateful it's only that. And who knows, with enough Pilates maybe I'll be able to dance again? Imagine that!

But I do, I do miss my Blender community and Blendering. If I could add one thing to my life, that would be it. Not even roleplaying; the Blendering gang and streams.

And until I can be bothered to add those links here, if you want more constant (and less deep) life-bits from me, I (currently) post art on social media quite regularly: Instagram, Blue Sky, Twitter (don't give me that X nonsense).

--

This art has no pretty diffusions yet, but I hope the next post will have one that does. Until next time... 

Watercolor, War and Wedding

Right! So what happened since the last post, on January 21st?

For the past ten days there's war with Iran, so lots of missile sirens, running to the bomb shelter and waiting for the boom. Not me; I mean, I certainly wait for the boom, but I don't run to the shelter, not on account of unique bravery but on account of having a bum knee, and if I rush down three flights of stairs seven times a day, I'll end up hospitalized. So boyfriend and his kids rush to the shelter, while I remain up here with the cat and hope for the best. 

There's some anxiety there, I won't deny it; but it's quite small on account of my trademark unrealistic optimism (or denial). But there are significant benefits to not having to drop everything and run to spend half an hour in a cold, stuffy small space with eight neighbors some of which you really don't enjoy (the top-volume radio news from their phones, mainly). First, whatever I'm in the middle of doing isn't interrupted. Second, no cold and smelly and half an hour of discomfort. Just a brief wondering of 'is this it for me?' between the siren and the boom, and worrying about the boyfriend, who's spirit is slowly being whittled down by the interruptions and stress.

I hope the war ends soon; the people in Iran are in a far worse situation than us (this isn't a hate war between peoples, it's a hate war between the government's ideologies). For us this is (so far) discomfort; for them it's all the horrors of war, like you see in the movies, with a government that mostly kills its own citizens. Were I a religious person, I'd be praying for the Iranians. 

So that was the most dramatic news. Other than that - I'm still obsessed with watercolor, though I used to paint all day every day and had to stop for five weeks for a throat! Infection! Fudge! That! I had no idea a simple winter strep could knock me out for over a month. Now it's gone I'm back to my happy obsession, and, as a bonus, it turns out that when I play with my watercolor I forget about the war. Turns out all those tutorial people saying 'watercolor is good for your mental health' have a point. 

So here's the spread I'm working on tonight, with the two random-archaeology-items on the right and the beetles on the left. It's not a lot of painting proper, the spread designs - but it scratches the completionist itch, and I have at least one friend who says it's very aesthetic and pleasing, which is enough to motivate me.

It's been forty five years of making art; I started when I could hold a marker, did lots of colored pencils and acrylic during highschool, some oils later, switched to digital with photoshop when I was twenty, stuck to that until 36, then discovered Blender and 3D and dropped all things painting for eight years, because Blender was much more fun. 

Thing is, now that I'm back to painting, I'm not doing it for the sake of creating an image I have in my mind; nowadays that can be done witn AI, and infinitely better than I'll ever be able to. I paint because it's fun, which leads me to my current problem: I don't know what I like to paint. 

It's been around all my life, people using prompts and inktobers and fanart100 and so on, and I never got it; I never lacked for things to draw or paint, because I was roleplaying in various tabletop D&D (or MERP, or Vampire, or Freestyle, or 7th Sea, or Amber Diceless, or Victorian Occult) campaigns, and nothing sets my inspiration on fire like roleplaying. I've not roleplayed for a couple of years now, though - life's too busy, and full of nice things - so no inspiration, and no friends to please with my art...

(Actually, there is a small Cthulhu campaign - but not only am I the GM, and not only do we meet once in a blue moon, also one of the three players is a proper artists, a tattoo artist and person who truly paints for passion and makes my drawings look like a child's doodles.)

Which brings me back to I don't know what I like to paint. All the tutorials have flowers, leaves, cute animals, cute random doodles, eye-pleasing abstract art, scenery or what I call 'kindergarten projects', which is anyone-can-do-this happy splashing of paint in a sketchbook. None of those appeal to me, and I think that only today I got what they all miss: Narrative. I need a story to excite me to paint something. It doesn't need to be much, but it needs to be more than just aesthetic or fun to make. Which is a stupid reason to get stuck and not painting, but there you have it. 

Oh, one more thing happened - boyfriend proposed! 

Behold my magnificent ring of 14 carat plastic, accidentally sent to boyfriend years ago from Aliexpress instead of the Lego Millenium Falcon mount he ordered! We're properly engaged though, which means somewhen in the upcoming months we'll hop over to the lawyer to sign papers and make it official.It turns out one can actually have two loves of one's life (though, in most cases and this one too, not simultaneously). 

And last... I really miss Blender. Watercolor paint is fun and addictive and I love it, but I do wish I had a Warcraft-art Blender commission or two. It's been to long. 

It's already been five hours without a missile alarm; perhaps the bombers in Iran are having a good night's sleep. One can hope.

A Perfect Day of Fish and Abstract

Today was perfect. 

Life for the past year or so has been as close to perfect as reasonably possible, but most days have a niggle or two, even if only in the form of house chores; today did have chores, but they felt good because I was all alone, entirely peaceful and in no hurry. 

What, other than peace of mind and inspiration, makes a day perfect? Soft winter lighting, a cat napping next to me, some relaxing piano in the background, and managing to finish at least one watercolor thing I'm pleased with. 

Here's my safe space:

We'll start with the best:

Charlie confiscated my chair and went to sleep on it, but was receptive to the occasional cuddle and did purr at me galore.

My first attempt at painting abstract, following the current book's instructions, failed; what do you mean 'paint a design of random shapes'? This is what I got the book for, woman! If I knew how to come up with pretty designs made of random shapes I wouldn't need to learn this... 

Right, so, out of 12, more than half looked like a hot mess so I cut them off the page and stuck them in my practice book in the shape of the pile of rubbish they are:

While the ones I liked - and I can't analyze what makes them better - I glued at the top of the page, neatly arranged:

Then I thought maybe it's best to skip the 'invent random shapes' and go with what the book calls 'abstract scenery'. Combined a few tutorials from the book to make this, then used it to progress with the current practice book spread, which is sea-themed. And I rather like it! It's not too sucky, so I consider it my first decent abstract.

So about the practice book spreads. Before this obsession with watercolor I had a brief obsession with scrapbooking; and while all the glittery stickers are currently in the drawer, I sort of made the watercolor practice book into a 'scrapbooky' thing, because I don't just stick the paintings in it, but vaguely arrange the pieces by topics on separate spreads, and then paint things to complete the spread and make it look nice. So if there was a rustic lantern tutorial from Dream and Draw, and a mountain cottage painted for practice, and a loose potted plant to finish the paint on the palette...

...Then I can give it a title and use the rest of the palette's paint on it, then spend two weeks trying to think what fits with that page...

It ended up with that pinecone decoration, the birds and the shelf, and - my favourite - painting worn wood, and I have no idea why I liked it so much. 

Anyway, the current one is sea-themed, because Dream and Draw had a tutorial for a coral, and I painted a crab with the same technique; and Negin Armon had this beautiful abstract sea scene, which used about half my tube of tippex because I messed it up so badly; so clearly some sea-things needed to happen.

Here's what I have so far; the sun piece and the fish are what I did today.

Things that excite me, #01: I'm making pieces specifically for the spread, meaning the composition of those rocks with the starfish on them was tailored to fill the space there in what I hope is an interesting way. I'm also proud of that painting - it's entirely my own, composed from a few underwater photos with some good practicing of shapes in space and what Dream and Draw teaches; I think my art school teachers would approve. 

Things that excite me, #02: I was painting the inevitable fish - from photo reference - and got stuck. I knew what I'd painted didn't look finished, but I had no idea what details I should add or how to make it better. So I took a photo of what I had, fed it to AI and asked Nano Banana to 'add detail and improve it'. This is the third time I do this - there was the white flower and the Fords of Bruinen - but this time I actually used the feedback to successfully finish my painting - look!

And I learnt so much! Like, the glossy strip on the back, or the delicate details of the fins; the fold under the eye or how to paint a fish eye to begin with, with a fineliner circle around the white, to make it pop; that the scales grow smaller the closer they get to the tail, and that they can be shaded with a drop of pure pigment where they emerge under another scale. For some reason, I couldn't deduce any of this when I looked at the reference photos; it's as if I freeze with the abundance of visual detail. I'd like to learn to reduce that detail in my mind, rather than have to ask AI to show me, but it showing me and me taking notes is a good way to learn when there's no teacher around to ask. 

The fish palette was this:

It's been a while since I got that Coral Reef tube from Daniel Smith; I was in love with it in the shop, but then it arrived and looked like weird flesh, and it has white in it - I should have known - so it's not as transparent as I like my paints to be - but, I mean, I was painting a sea-themed spread, it had to be used there. Though right now it's only on the fish.

It's not entirely clear to me how to finish this spread; I know I don't like the swatches above the abstract sun piece and will prolly paint something different instead. It'll also be good to come up with a title which is not the 'Under The Sea' cliche, but not as elusive as 'drowning - the locals approve', which made me laugh and I enjoyed painting, but will likely be misunderstood, or just missed, by anyone seeing it. And I still need to visually connect and frame the page on the left...

This is both frustrating and somehow inspiring. It drives me, I find; the need to complete, to finish. In this time in my life, where I do things almost entirely for leisure, this is not a bad thing. 

If I thought there was a greater, intelligent force out there, I'd be thanking it every day for this; for the love, the cat, the inspiration, the peace, the... the lack of... daily negative influence from a person I can't escape. It's so... alien. And wonderful. Whoever, whatever is not out there: thank you. 

Optimal Paint Arrangement

There's many things that make me happy, and excellent, optimized, practical order is one. You wouldn't believe it from the child I've been - your regular messy room, messy everything child and teen - but at 23 something changed and went so far that I worked for a while at organizing people's houses.

It took a while to gather all the watercolor paints for my ideal palette, and while that was happening I slowly came up with the perfect setup for me, so here it is:

Why is this the perfect optimization?

1. The paint tubs are magnetic, not on a rail, so they're much easier to get out for a limited-palette painting, or to reorder.
2. They're arranged by manufacturer, then by temperature.
3. They're spaced so that the label I printed can be comfortably read, and I marked those optimal spaces with a sharpie, inside the box.
4. There are swatches because one can't always tell from the pan what the color actually looks like. They also show the current (optimized) arrangement of the paints, in case it gets messed up.
5. The swatches are protected with plastic so they don't smudge, and the names on it are written on masking tape so I can replace them if needed, or if I change the order inside the box.
6. The swatche page is glued with white tack; easy to remove or replace.

This makes me disproportionately happy.

~.~.~.~

There's stuff to do today so I didn't get to painting yet; there were groceries, and it's been two weeks since Quazi came over for an Accountability Day so the paranoid cat forgot about him and had a fit when he showed up, and I had to fish him from behind the bed where he was cowering with giant pupils (the cat, not Quazi). And the kid had a major maths exam and came back all hyped; and it's a bit hard to focus. 

But Now everyone's settled - Quazi is working, the cat is napping and the teenager is knitting or Minecrafting in her tower, and I can get to that pretty stylized undersea painting tutorial I found the other day and see how many time I mess it up before I manage. This is fun.

Belvane's Book of Blunders complete! (art mega post)

It's been two months of constant Flow and excitement about watercolor. I'm binging tutorials, when I was in bed for a couple of days I realized that 'watching tutorials when you can't watch vids' is called books and got six and binged three, I spent an unholy amount of my monthly budget on supplies and I'm having as much fun as I had every time there came a period of wild inspiration like this - the last was the scrapbooking, and before that Blender filled that space for almost eight years (though it was less intense after 2018, perhaps for the best). 

Usually I sleep 16 hours a day (some medical thing) but when at the peak of excitement like this, which sometimes lasts months on end, I can get away with five or six. I'm having so much fun. 

However, this run is different to the ones before because it's been a great year, and my situation is the best it's ever been. The boyfriend; the financial safety; the lack of toxic family; those all make me feel as happy-ever-after as realistically possible.

I miss my streaming community, and feel a bit as if I betrayed them by getting burnt out with Blender and focusing on traditional crafts. Sometimes I contemplate streaming this, watercolor and composition and scrapbooking, but then I worry I'll disappoint people.

During the last two months I filled my first sketchbook ever. That is - I had heavens-know how many sketch books before, but they were traditionally flimsy notebooks filled with bad sketches in red pencil, and I was happy with hardly any of them; then I migrated to digital painting and never looked back. Now, however, I enjoy watercolor because I don't need to get good at it, and I don't much care what it is I'm painting, as long as it's aesthetically pleasing. So it's not the kind of sketchbook you try things in before you make the final - that's still in a flimsy school notebook full of messy notes - but it's the 40  pages where I glued anything watercolor that came out pretty. Or amusing; there's a few failures there, and I kept them because either they taught me something, or made me laugh. It also jas quite a few loose splotches and unimpressive things, just because it's fun to play with brushes and paint.

Goodness, I love growing older. Being free of all the self doubt and expectations of earlier years is so liberating I feel I could fly.

It took me two months to finish, and completing it was a drive on its own, though I don't understand why.

Do I upload half that sketchbook now? Is this going to be a mega post?

...It's going to be a mega post.

The whole 'practice book' idea comes from This vid by Andrea Nelson. She has incredible - and I don't use that word lightly - positive, charming energies, she feels genuine and I find she uplifted my spirit every time. This vid got me to start the practice book and make mistakes in it, and the first page is how she made hers. One day I might find the courage to thank her. 

There's no way I'm uploading the whole thing here; I'll select what I like most.

So here's the colourful mushrooms and blobs page, also following Andrea Nelson's guidance. That made me cheerful.

And the other side of this spread, which failed, as it looks nothing like the source and nothing like what I hoped for:

Then I learnt that 'doodles' are very aesthetic things that usually involve delicate, colourful watercolor with whimsical pen on top of it; First I saw it at Nianiani, then researched and found a whole genre which was new to me and enjoyable to explore. It started with the trees and a tube of paint I didn't know but realized I loved, which drove this whole double spread:

The next one is on a day I was dying to paint but couldn't think of anything enjoyable, so I drew what happened that day - another thing I learnt from people on Youtube. 

More whimsical trees,  because the colours are so pretty. The text there says as much, and the note at the bottom says 'today I'm simply happy'. I think it was the first Sunday I spent entirely alone, painting calmly in my sunlit white room with the cat purring next to me. 

The cat is the stupidest thing alive. It's paraplegic, which means it can't jump, but since it's too stupid to know or care, it's just a happy cat. It also climbs anything it can sink its nails into, so all the chairs, sofas and beds in the house. And seeing him walk around derpily, all happy as he drags his lower half behind him and lets it thump down the stairs, is hilarious. His name's Charles (like X-avier) and after over a year of living here he finally started trusting me and now we share a bed and cuddle a lot. He also pees on me on occasion. He doesn't care; neither do I.

Look at the adorable void behind those eyes.

Masking fluid! It's liquid latex you apply to the page with a (cheap, ruinable) brush, let it dry, then paint freely over it, then peel it and find it has protected thw white of the paper underneath, so suddenly keeping highlights is easy!

Tried to paint blueberries. Spent a while studying and analyzing them, planned the composition, and halfway though realized it bores me. I don't think I enjoy realistic painting anymore; there's AI for that. 

There were so many beautiful doodles on instagram, professional looking, inspiring and a bit misleading in the ease with which the artists seem to make them; I'm trying to find what's my own calm-your-mind easy doodle, but all my hand came up with was a bunch of elements I like. I ended up using this page to convey the joy at how great decent watercolors are, compared to the cheap fake I've used before that point. Winsor Newton Cotman feels so silky! The brush glides on the paper, the paint behaves, and getting a smooth wash was suddenly easy. 

Another genre of doodles is cute icons, usually of seasonal things like pumpkins and ghosts in October, mittens and Santa sticks in December, or just thematic things like 'at the beach' with fetching designs of beach toys and swimsuits and such. The genre appealed to me but not the topics, so I tried a few themed 'Medieval Medicine'. Turns out I'm not the best with icon design (I don't care) - but this page is one of my favourites because it expresses one of my core sentiments. 

 

Then I did the mistake of getting out of the house and bumped into an art store and bought an array of dry paint tubs and only when I got home did I realize they were all cute pastels. And to think that when I was 17 I was all faux-goth and though torment appealed to me. 

During the Friend's-Birthday-Weekend-of-Roleplaying I bought a small sketchbook and discoeverd the importance of decent paper, which it wasn't. That was like painting on a t-shirt - as in, it sucked the paint right in, and no blending or lifting could be done. Back at home I compared it to my regular 100% cotton, cold press Baohong (it's the most affordable good paper) and, well, that's this page:

Did I say I didn't want to paint realistically? I might have been wrong. Perhaps one day I'll manage to make beautiful, semi-realistic mushrooms that will also show all the beauty of transparent, airy watercolor; this here is how I don't want to do it...

Loose flowers. Pretty, and fun to paint. Tutorial by Emma Jane Lefebvre, whose Watercolor Month series of tutorials kept me afloat for an entire week. She's also a sweety, and I'd like to be able to thank her one day.

The other side of this spread:

Another bored page, but painting it was very relaxing and a good memory, as my boyfriend came to my room and was sorting his dice collection while I painted, and we listenet to the Buffy musical. What a great way to spend an evening. 

More relaxing, loose flowers:

And a page I made only because I wanted an entire spread with pink and gold. But I got better at finding things that come naturally for me to doodle:

Same painting, on the left with the fake paints, on the right with The Sacred Daniel Smith paints. I used to think they cost an arm and a leg, and then I discovered M Graham and Holbein, which are too expensive for me to want to get, but certainly made me feel grateful for Daniel Smith being more affordable. I don't know that it looks better, but it was much driendlier to work with.  

 

More following this tutoeial by Emma Jane Lefebvre: monochrome, and brush strokes. She specializes on florals. They're very pretty, and I enjoyed binging her channel, although I don't think florals is what excites me. I hope to find what is.

This isn't a particularly beautiful page, but it made a huge difference in my ability to easily sketch flowers - and all it took was drawing a whole page of loose practice, Peter Han style (he taught Dynamic Sketching back in 2013). From that moment on, flowers got easy.

Finishing Emma Jane Lefebvre's 31 days of Watercolor with a floral border tutorial:

And this, in Nianiani's style, which I painted when I wanted to paint but had no better ideas, because it's easy and relaxing. At the bottom are floral compositions by an Emma Lefebvre's tutorial, again. 

Here's another favourite page, because barring the candy (copied from Pinterest) the rest is entirely my own! Drawing stylized children was much harder than I thought, but I want to get better at it because that's something I do find appealing to draw. I want to get to a point it's easy. Still - proud of this one.

There's another thing I really like the aesthetic of - Arabian Nights. This page is mostly not mine - it's either tutorials or studies of other people's work - but it hits the right spot in my heart.

This was when I bumped into Anastasia Kozlova. It's hard to remember how it happened; ended up buying her book and been binging it ever since. She teaches very pretty watercolor decorated with pen; I follow her tutorial, then make an interpretation of my own to make sure I can use what I learnt. In this one, the central monstera leaf is the tutorial and the two on its sides are mine.

I'm usually picky with teachers; this one's a very decent teacher, and does it so methodically my organizing-loving soul sings. Here's the line index, which serves in all the paintings I learnt from her - the donut is the tutorial, the cupcake is my practice.

Another favourite page. The boat's the original, the umbrella my interpretation. For some reason I don't understand, this page makes me happy.

Look at the pretty palette Kozlova designed for this starfish! The conch is mine, and, having practiced identifying simple forms with Kozlova, translating it from photo to drawing was surprisingly easy and very satisfying. 

This is one before last, and the sillyness of so crudely combining the two unrelated tutorial images is what I enjoyed:

And the final page in the book, with no tutorials because I wanted to test the progress I achieved in two months of practice. It also very much expresses how finishing that book made me feel

There's a chance this mega post managed to convey how excited I am about watercolors at the moment. The second practice book is already in use, and since I post here quite rarely, the next time I write I might do another artdump. 

It feels very nice to be in traditional art again. Getting rid of the urge to be exceptionally good at it brought tons of relaxation and fun to my life.