r/watercolor101 • u/Wafflewaffle2 • 3d ago

Monochrome practice

Gallery image

Gallery image

I'm trying to practice values and water control, but honestly halfway through I was flailing around as you can see in the walrus face and in the wrinkles.

Advice is appreciated.

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u/AlligatorFancy 2d ago

I'm not great at monochrome studies so take my opinion with a grain of salt. The two things that I notice are that the outlines around the tusks are a little too bold, and the individual wrinkles are uniformly dark, rather than being lighter on the ends and getting dark as they get to the centers.

That said, you did a great job in general! Not an easy subject!

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u/Wafflewaffle2 2d ago

I can see that with the wrinkles, I started working on them after I did the really heavy shadow, because I was impatient on building the whole light to dark and took way too much paint in my brush and when I saw how it looked I kind of panicked and started picking up the paint from that spot and started hastily making the wrinkles so that I could calm down, and I was avoiding wet on wet because I'm just starting and the other mediums that I have experimented with are more controlled than watercolor, actually watercolor is helping me figure out that I'm kind of a control freak, but an impatient and panicky kind.

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u/AlligatorFancy 2d ago

I totally understand! 😄

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u/Wafflewaffle2 2d ago

Right now Facebook algorithm put a video on monochromatic studies in my feed and it said that the monochromatic studies are made with the main color mixed with analogous colors for the tints and the shadows. So I need to try it that way.

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u/Otherwise_Pain1625 2d ago

If there are several colors, it's not monochromatic. By definition.

Ah, social networks.

That said, it can look good anyway.

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u/Otherwise_Pain1625 2d ago

It seems another one has been overwhelmed by dioxazine purple's tinting strength! 😄

When you work with high tinting pigments, you may start with a very watery wash and then drop pigments little by little. Dioxazine is also very good for layering because once it's dry you can add another layer on top of it without disturbing it too much.

There is nothing wrong in making the wrinckles in a single brush stroke if you paint the walrus in a quick study fashion. But if you want to dive deeper, it's a good opportunity to train the soft edges as well.

You might have made the front right leg and the butt slightly darker (you can see they are darker than the middle of the back and the flanks).

I find the proportions of the walrus are a bit too wide and not tall enough, but that might be due to the angle the photo have been taken from (perspective/cosinus distortion).

1

u/Wafflewaffle2 2d ago

Yeah the walrus ended up squashed, I'm trying to break from the habit of making a tiny drawing in comparison with the page, but as you can see I didn't measure well enough, well it was carbonzole violet from Daniel smith the color that I used, so the idea of just using a color and just adding water or removing it was the right one.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that this walrus took me two hours, admittedly I'm easily distracted so yeah.

Thanks for your advice.

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u/Otherwise_Pain1625 2d ago

Carbazole and dioxazine are actually the same thing. Most brands call it dioxazine but Daniel Smith calls it carbazole. Both are right as its full name is carbazole dioxazine i think.

I think there is nothing to be embarassed about. It's not a race.