Hi Everyone,
Happy Monday! I hope you had a pleasant weekend.
I started to paint the portrait based on the photo picked in a poll. I wanted it to be more stylized than the first, pencil study, and I like it better this way.
It’s the first time I’m using my new Arches paper and I need to say it - the quality is amazing! It’s expensive but in my opinion the quality is totally worth the price. Using other papers, I was able to apply a few layers of color at most, before it started peeling or buckling. This paper endures a lot and nothing annoying happens - it remains smooth and flat. That's why I think even though it's expensive, I'll learn more on one card than on a few sheets of cheap paper.

In a way, I’m like this dog from a meme and have no idea what I'm doing. Of course, there are many aspects that I know from other techniques and they translate into watercolor painting, but many issues are new to me. I need to paint more studies like this to learn how much water to use, how to choose the right colors and values faster, how to mix paints, how long to wait for the paint to dry, how many layers I can apply, how to fix my mistakes etc. These are things that I need to test several times and start to feel more comfortable with, before I can accurately describe and convey into words. I have a lot of fun learning!
The materials I use:
- Arches Hot Pressed paper - 300 g, 18cm x 26cm. (Half of the page)
- White Nights paints
- Roman Szmal synthetic squirrel brush - 113 large
If you’re interested in other entries to this challenge or would like to share your study, join the art-challenges channel on our Discord 👾
Hugs,
Gaby