Pinker than Shepherd's Delight

I sat down with my watercolours today and I had a bloody good time. Throughout my course I never really had the time available to sit and pour hours into getting to grips with the medium, and if you happen to have followed me over the last three years you'll have noticed a trend in me pulling out my paints every summer and attempting a portrait. I find it oddly exciting and relaxing to just sit and paint 'properly', so for me it's kind of cathartic to sit down in the summer at the end of a busy academic year and just pour some time into something that yields no reward, but just brings me a little bit of joy.

playin' with gouache

after seeing so many good things done with and said about gouache paints, i decided to hop onto the bandwagon and purchase myself a set of them. after my first play with them, i wasn't overly impressed - they just seemed to produce the same effect as watercolours but with so much more effort needed to work with them - but i persisted and played some more and i think i may now have developed some sort of understanding that may help me to work with them in future. i doubt i'll ever work solely with gouache, but i like how opaque the colours are so they could come in handy to use alongside my watercolours and pencils!

while experimenting i decided to work with marina again because she's very, very lovely looking and i always find it rewarding to draw attractive people. hair aside, i think i'm pretty happy with this piece.

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

my favourite ladies

last week i decided to experiment with pencil and watercolour, and after enjoying the results that i achieved, i decided to have a go at creating a set of images within this style. i chose to use some of my favourite ladies as my models, marina diamandis, ellie goulding, zooey deschanel and emma stone, because i have a soft spot for every one of them but also because they're all beautiful, too, and i've found that drawing beautiful people is, for some reason, very enjoyable.

so, there we have it. a 'project' of mine, if you like. hopefully when uni's done with and i'm not a slave to my coursework i'll be able to set myself some more projects and have fun with them!

 please view on flickr for better quality!

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin