Hilltop Cabin

[Balaji]

I tried to do a proper watercolour sketch today, after a very long time. This is approximately 20 cms x 28 cms, on 440 gsm Chitrapat watercolour paper (rough). Reference: an image on Pinterest.

 

[Sanlynn]

I love how you’ve done this painting, Balaji! Everything about it appeals to me from muted palette to the suggestion of the clouds and mountains. Well done!!

 

[KreativeK]

Love this!

 

[Joy]

Wonderful piece! So beautiful and restrained, with just enough information. You have been so prolific lately, and are progressing well.

 

[Balaji]

Sanlynn, Kay, and Joy...Thank you.

Sanlynn...I have referred to a photo on Pinterest while doing this and therefore cannot claim any credit for the composition and information on it. But I did work with the leftover paint on my palette and therefore, to a small extent, I could say that the palette is my own.

Joy...I have been doing a lot of gestural sketching in pen and ink, and adding colour washes to them. Most of these sketches (including the washes) take me twenty minutes or less. In the last six months I have done only three pen and ink sketches and one watercolour on which I have spent more than an hour.

 

[snoball]

Excellent! I love the way the cabin and its little hilltop stand out from the distant mountains. Well done.

 

[Joy]

Joy...I have been doing a lot of gestural sketching in pen and ink, and adding colour washes to them. Most of these sketches (including the washes) take me twenty minutes or less. In the last six months I have done only three pen and ink sketches and one watercolour on which I have spent more than an hour.

Your are truly my inspiration! My work has been taking longer and longer, for less result. So I am getting rather discouraged at times. You are able to capture the essence of a subject quickly and accurately. My overworking is getting me nowhere, but I do realize that works go through an "ugly phase". It doesn't seem prudent to "give up" too soon. If I abandoned everything I didn't like mid process, I would never complete anything. It gets to the point that I get tired of working on it and just finish it so I can feel I didn't "quit". So I may have to change "tactics" at this juncture. possibly limiting my time on a piece.

 

[Donna T]

Gorgeous painting! The cabin really stands out from those distant mountains!

 

[Balaji]

Excellent! I love the way the cabin and its little hilltop stand out from the distant mountains. Well done.

Thank you Margaret & Donna . I am glad you like it. But I have used someone else's work (I do not know the artist's name) on Pinterest as reference.

 

[Balaji]

Your are truly my inspiration! My work has been taking longer and longer, for less result. So I am getting rather discouraged at times. You are able to capture the essence of a subject quickly and accurately. My overworking is getting me nowhere, but I do realize that works go through an "ugly phase". It doesn't seem prudent to "give up" too soon. If I abandoned everything I didn't like mid process, I would never complete anything. It gets to the point that I get tired of working on it and just finish it so I can feel I didn't "quit". So I may have to change "tactics" at this juncture. possibly limiting my time on a piece.

Joy...I very much want to draw and paint better. And I have received a lot of advice on how to do it. But some of the suggestions are contradictory. Therefore, in the end, I use my common sense and keep in mind that ultimately I need to enjoy the process.

As a result, I do a lot of quick sketching, some sketches and paintings of medium duration, and just a few on which I spend well over an hour, and sometimes more than a couple of hours.

I do a lot of small sketches and paintings, and only a few larger ones (A3 is the largest size that I draw or paint).

And I work a lot with dried out, leftover paint on my palette.

I think that in my case this totally takes away the anxiety to produce a good result. I am able to totally enjoy the act of sketching and painting, and also do it frequently. But I always have short term and long term improvement targets in mind, and most of the time I manage to achieve them.

 

[Jo Castillo]

This is so lovely. I love your left over colors. I'm smiling.

 

[Balaji]

Thank you Jo

 

[ams]

Very nice Balaji. I enjoy sketches too but I'm not as quick as you are.

 

[Balaji]

Very nice Balaji. I enjoy sketches too but I'm not as quick as you are.

I was quite slow until one of the members on an art forum challenged the rest of us to see what we could sketch in ten minutes. Around the same time another member challenged us to sketch in ink without any preliminary pencil sketch. I decided to try both (and later on I tried to do the same with painting too). The second challenge was not particularly difficult for me, but the first one was. Initially I could not do any meaningful sketch in terms of content within five minutes, and the quality was quite poor. But I persisted and gradually my sketches improved, both in speed and in quality.

Now, over the last few years, I have slowed down and I think the quality too is deteriorating, or at least it is not consistent. But I continue to get a lot of pleasure out of sketching and painting.