Friday, February 25, 2011

Tutorial: how to transfer a photo to watercolor paper


Hi! It's Lyric. I'm doing it again.
I had exactly what I wanted to do in my head the first day of the month.
Waited until the last minute anyway.
Stressing out because I'm trying to make it "good."
 This is the man I love. I call him Mr. Almost Perfect.
Isn't he handsome!?
The photo is by Julia Wade (who is having a photo shoot giveaway!)
I printed out a photo (yes I'm cheating again - I think it's FINE!)
Maybe in December I'll draw a face freehand.
I scribbled with a soft lead pencil on the back of the paper.
It's just enough that when I turn it over I can trace it...
...and transfer the lines to the surface of this thick watercolor paper.
I've added various color washes to almost all the pages of this book.
Just for fun. I think this was a watered down acrylic that was then sponged off a bit.
I decided to be bold and use a super cool japanese brush pen filled with india ink.
OK.... lesson learned. Don't color in the lips on guys.
Doodled with some water soluble crayons and more ink.
Doodling even more with acrylic paint markers.
I have no idea if I'm done or not. Sometimes it's best to just move on.
What do you do when something isn't working like you envisioned?
Give up? Learn from it?
Try something else? Try to fix it?
Start over?