It’s day 20 of the Find Your Art Style Experiment.  Today I decided to give the characters a rest, and revisit a style I created on day 2.

Started with a Reference Image

I found an image on Unsplash of an old man to use as reference and used my White Nights Watercolours and a Hobbycraft Watercolour pad. I like to go straight in with watercolour without doing any drawing first as I find it more fun this way. It does, however, mean that my proportions are very off. But I’m not trying to create a portrait with a likeness so it doesn’t matter too much.

White Nights watercolour paints and pad

Creating the Watercolour Face

painting the watercolour face

It’s been a few months since I painted a face with watercolours, so I had a couple of goes at it. I prefer the second face, but decide I might as well experiment with them both.

I wondered if acrylic ink would work instead of acrylic paint, but it was too thin. So I had to get that damned acrylic paint out again, after moaning about them yesterday, but at least it was just one colour yellow.

I applied the acrylic paint with an old brush, but it went a bit murky on the first one. I think the yellow ink had lifted the watercolour. It worked better on the second. I do wonder if it might be best to do the watercolour bit in acrylic inks instead of watercolour. Then the colour wouldn’t  lift, but I am not sure how that would work.

Drawing on Top of the Acrylic Paint

putting ink over the acrylic paint

Anyway, after I had hung them on the radiator for a while it was time for the fun bit. Time to draw over it with a fineliner pen and marker. And I do like how it turned out. I wonder if something like this might work with my character ideas. Maybe I could paint them in watercolour and then applied paint and pen like this. But I will leave that for another day. But I am definitely going to try this style again.

finished semi abstract face drawing

Tomorrow I am thinking of trying out Posca pens which I have had for years and barely used, or gwarsh, as Sandra would say. Apart from a bit of white, I haven’t used gouache for years. What do you think?

+ White Nights Watercolours – https://fave.co/2SMhfaS
+ Hobbycraft Watercolour Paper – https://fave.co/2ul6brO
+ Galeria Acrylic Paint – https://fave.co/2HFlUVt
+ Unipin Fineliner – https://fave.co/2VjgO9J
+ Sharpie Marker – https://fave.co/2v15PXx

*Some links are affiliate links. If you choose to buy anything through these links, we’ll make a small commission at no extra cost to you 🙂 Thanks so much for your support!

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