Scaryland

Lately I have been painting again and looked for knowledge and inspiration on Internet entering the scary land of art. I really enjoy the crafting community. It is so upbeat and positive and you can say what ever positive thing comes to your mind (oh! That reminds me of my grandma's scarf! I want to make that quilt!). Every encounter I have had with the art side however (and this has been outside Internet) has been much more focused on what is not cool and what is not art and all that negativity. I guess most of you are familiar with that? I have taken few painting classes in my time and I did enjoy most of them, but there where always this pressure to be on the right side of the "cool" (well, at least in my head), and very little focus on technique. 

I love to work with oil paint, but it is just not something I can do with little kids running around. Watercolours I can pick up any time and put away again in seconds. I did play with watercolours last year but that experiment was short lived. This time around I really want to focus on learning the technique. I used this tutorial for drawing the face and for the watercolour part I used this one.

I'm still working on it, but here you go. My first ever attempt to make a realistic watercolour portrait.

I already destroyed the paper around the mouth. It has been really fun to make, feels like making a puzzle. Now I just have to find the courage to continue. My goal is not necessarily to become a portrait painter, but I want to learn the techniques to do what ever I wish. When I was googleing for instructions I found this incredible Italian artist called Agnes Cecile working with watercolour. Her paintings are amazing but oh so sad!