Project 52

So Christmas has gone and the New Year is already 5 days old, I hope everyone had a great holiday!
Today it's back to work for most people, so to bring a little excitement to your day I'm going to tell you about a project I've been working on for the last year.

In 2008 I made a resolution to learn more about painting watercolours. In order to motive myself I set myself the challenge of painting one watercolour per week.

I decided I needed a bit of a theme for my paintings so that I wasn't flailing about every week wondering what I might paint.
I decided to base all my paintings on the characters and world of a story I'm working on since I was already exploring the story visually anyway.

Previous to this I had very limited watercolour knowledge, and the few I had done were very tight and controlled, I wanted to loosen up and have fun experimenting.

As a result, the first few paintings are total rubbish! XD"
In fact many of the paintings are complete disasters, but here and there I managed to produce somthing I felt pleased with.

Also I was not using the best materials, most of the paintings were done in an a5 sketchbook on cartridge paper, a few were on a4 boldemere watercolour paper *not very high quality paper* My brushes were a mix of old watercolour brushes and new boldmere ones. The paints are Daler-Rowney halfpans and also boldmere tube paints *again the boldmere not very good quality, tho I love the cerulean blue and purple! X3*
I know the old saying goes if you don't use the best tools you can't expect the best results, but not everyone can afford the best tools, so it was either have a go with what I had avaliable to me or not try at all.
So I had a go! ;)

I looked at many watercolour books through the year, and many different artists who paint in different styles.
One of the problems I found was that I liked so many different styles I couldn't settle on just one, and sometimes the styles got mixed up in a bad way I think.
I still don't know which style of watercolours I aspire too even after 52 paintings!

Also I'm still not an accomplished watercolourist, but I hope I've learned a little on which I can continue to build.

Anyone who is experienced in watercolours, feel free to leave constructive critiscm and tips for improving! ;)

Here's the very first painting.

I know, I know, it's not very good, but they do get better, I promise! *well a little better*

Here's a little teaser of thumbnails from some of the paintings you'll see over the year.


Over this year I will be uploading all 52 paintings, good, bad and terrible, shown for your judgement on Flickr.
Once a month I'll post here and show off the best paintings from that month. Also I'll be uploading the very best to RedBubble so you can buy them as prints etc if you wish.

Next month I actually have some decent paintings to show so be sure to come back then!