Watercolor Crayon Paintings in Progress

These look awful! But they will be good paintings once I complete a few more steps.

I start these by drawing a basic sketch on watercolor paper. Then I draw patterns and some details with colored pencils. Next I take the watercolor crayons and put some color and shading in.

Tomorrow I'm going to do the next step of using watercolor on top of these. That will make all the crayon parts turn into watercolor. I could just use water but I like to experiment with just a little more color. I may put in some metallic detail with acrylic paint, and then ink the outlines in.

I like this technique because I can do the first part in my home office at my desk. There's no water to spill! I will do the rest of it in my studio upstairs where the cats are not allowed.

It's also really fun to get the paintings to this stage and then see what happens to them when the water is applied. It feels magical.

1 year ago

I was putting this up as one of my new paintings - well, new since I started updating this blog a lot. I was surprised when I looked at the date. It was painted on August 23, 2010.

This is watercolor and ink on watercolor paper, with acrylic paint highlights. It was painted for an online auction for a cat shelter.

New paintings and techniques

Did you ever have any of those children's activity books where they had pictures colored with dots, and you activated the paint by painting them with water? I had those and I found them very fun.

Recently I started using watercolor crayons. Using them feels like a cross between wax crayons and oil pastels. They are water soluble though, so painting them with water activates the colors and turns them into watercolor.

The fish painting uses water color crayon and colored pencils and then it's painted with regular water colors in the background. The lines are done with black colored pencil.

The tiger lily painting was done with colored pencils first. I did detail pattern work on the tiger lilies and the background. Then I colored them in with the crayons and painted with water.

The tiger lily painting took way to long with that background! It's a learning experience.

Catching Up

I've been painting more, and also doing some digital art. I'm drawing on my Wacom tablet. It's very awkward to draw on it still, but I'm getting better. I plan on doing a line of greeting cards and other products such as magnets, t-shirts, etc.

Otherwise, I'm selling real estate. Yes, this takes up a lot of my time! I'm doing well though. I'm selling mostly to investors and first time buyers.

I am involved with cat rescue- I'm on the board of SANS - Spay And Neuter Syracuse. It's a clinic that provides spay/neuter services for homeless animals and people who can't afford full cost services at vets. Last winter I worked on Pawcasso, an art auction fundraiser.

I am going to post on this blog when I finish paintings. Besides the digital, I've been doing a lot of watercolor/ink/watercolor crayon. Watercolor is easier to do when you don't have much time. Though I like acrylic better, I can take a half hour in the morning and get quite a bit done on watercolors. With the acrylic, I have to use a lot of time for setup and cleanup.

This is one of my more recent paintings, itwas done with watercolor and resist. You paint the foreground first - the cat and fish. Then I covered them with a rubber-like substance and painted the backgrounds. When it dried, I rubbed off the resist. It was hard to get the resist just right, it took several coats. I like the way it turned out. I have cards and products with this image for sale in my Zazzle store.

Cat and Fish Resist by MelskyArt
Create a Post card with zazzle.com

A mistake and how I fixed it

This is an 8x10 painting on watercolor paper. I started it the way I do most of my watercolor paintings - a pencil sketch and then working quickly to color in the painting, letting it dry between layers.

But the orange paint of the cat got away from me, I wet the paper more than usual and his ear got smudged. Orange paint made a big lump on his head.

So I finished the rest of the painting and then did the background with dioxazine purple acrylic paint. That's a very dark color and it looks almost black.

I like the way it came out. It has a bit of an Eastern European look to it, with the dark background and bright colors.

It's difficult to scan paintings with acrylic. The type of acrylic paint I use is glossy, and it looks great in real life but it picks up glare in scans and photos.

I'm happy I was able to save this painting! I may do some more with this technique.

New painting!

11x14 on canvas Psycho Kitty painting. This one is sold, it was part of an auction to support a cat shelter.

Spiral Sky Cactus

I'm on a roll here. Like the last one, this is an 8x10 watercolor and ink with metallic acrylic accents. I was experimenting with watercolor washes. I used some salt to give a crystallized effect in the sky but I didn't like it so mostly painted over it.

I ordered some new watercolors and will be experimenting with blocking - where you block out an area which is already painted so it doesn't absorb more paint. When I was painting this one, I wished I had some of that to paint over the cactus so I could have done more of a wash effect in the sky. I had wanted it to be in dawn colors and I had gotten an effect I liked but because I was constrained painting around the cactus it got messed up and I just went ahead and did a lot of purple spirals.

A lot of times when I mess things up I paint spiral patterns over it! But don't tell anyone.