From marker to watercolor - Wilanow Park

Painting in Wilanow 

After that 'failure' which happened to me in Drawing lessons - 3 - painting with 3 colors I felt the need to create something right away, using all the new observations I've made, so the day after we went cycling,  looking for some good location to draw.
We ended with the same place (Wilanow Park), but a different location.

Here you can see few stages from the work. Below the image you can find a little story about. This is not a part of classes, just our self education.

From marker to watercolor - Neoclassical Pump Station in Wilanow Park / Warsaw

The story

First time ever I used a non removable marker to draw such large and complex subject + outdoors (wow).
The idea was to draw the whole scene without any corrections, through a limited period of time and to learn, how to simplify things, how to react on a changing light, people and other objects appearing in the 'frame'.



Well... what can I say... I REALLY LOVED IT! It's pretty crazy, but looks like my brain has made already few new connections:) Before the course I'd NEVER try nor even think about drawing outdoors, using the marker (like an ink), with all those changing things around, insects biting or sitting on my nose, on paper or hands.

After the first 30 minutes I got enough, I thought I am gonna kill!, destroy my bike, camera or anything around. I was ready to run away, but just  looked at the sketch and ... it was almost ready.. 10 minutes and I would finish it.. Stayed then for another 30 minutes. That was another 'hard' experience, but I survived and got a bunch of new ideas and observations for my brain.

About the process

Picture 1 - painting with a pen marker helps to eliminate the unexisting "Undo feature" problem, I could use a pencil first and then draw over those lines, but my target is as always - speed and accuracy. Just need to find the balance.

My cheap marker is pretty good but I need to find more waterproof one like Pitt Artist Pens by Faber Castell I suppose, need to look around.

Picture 2 - as I really wanted to try our new Koh I Noor aquarell pencils, started to draw over the building and.... I really got enough. After over one hour I got tired, so we went back home.

Picture 4 - the result is ugly, right? It's so HARD to find a proper color among those 36 pencils! I just can't imagine to get a 72 pieces set. I'd probably jump of the bridge.

Mixing the paint trying to find a right color is 1000 times easier. Another thing is, that despite the drawing process is amazingly comfortable, problem appears while adding the water. First - I've read  some book before that said the color saturation will decrease - but it went up (confirmed from other sources later)! And second problem is that the strokes stay on place sometimes and I don't like it!

So at this time I'll use these pencils only for details and will try some other kind of paper.

Pictures 5 and 6 - at home I had a 'brilliant idea' and made two more copies on my printer/scanner, leaving the image in sketchbook untouched. Saving my nerves and the sketch.
Then I painted over one thick and one thin paper, with the really good watercolor set I used already before in an architectural painting.

In image no. 6 I tried to correct some earlier decisions from no. 5, but still I prefer no. 5. Although the workflow from no. 6 was better and I'll repeat it next time.


What I've learned is:

- confirmed that painting/drawing outdoors is an amazing experience
- managed to eliminate some distracting objects from the final sketch and added other objects "from the timeline" as they passed/walked/floated by, like people(!), boats or ducks - impossible to do on a single photo


- marker gives really good visual result and suits well as a sketch for watercolor

What went wrong or could go better:

- framing and measuring still not as fast/accurate as I need
- next time need to check out the environment for insects ;) not only to take a good drawing position
- use watercolor pencils for details only (will work on it)
- painted areas still do not look as I want them to be. I prefer more dreamy result  like Mike Chaplin shows in his books for example


Thanks for reading and... what do you think ?  BTW it's better to look at this painting from the distance. I just can't wait to use all that knowledge in the real world, using my pen tablet and then to make some money ;)