painting practice process! + some little updates

(that title is a mouthful haha) HEY Y'ALL! i'm coming to ya live from my neeeeew computer!!!

she's so big and beautiful TuT for those curious about the specs: it's a 15.4" refurbished macbook pro from may 2019, 32 GB of memory, 1TB of internal storage, Radeon Pro Vega 16 graphics card, and an i9 processor!! i was able to spring for some extra memory, storage, and a sweet graphics card bc it was refurbished :D i've been saving for this for a little over a year now, but i was able to save up this money because of you guys!! this computer is definitely more powerful than my macbook air, so now i'll be able to edit videos without feeling like my computer might die :') thank you so so so much y'all, i'm so grateful *cry*

ANYWHO! last week rebecca green published a gouache tutorial on her blog, along with a template, so i decided to take friday evening to just paint my heart out!! again, the template was drawn by rebecca, so i used this time to practice my gouache technique and also work on my color/value skills. 

so i started by printing out the template and tracing it on a piece of bristol using my light tablet and a prismacolor col-erase red pencil. i laid down this peach and pink for the table and background, and i'm very happy with how they look next to each other :> that being said, i was very nervous about adding more color and painting the bottles 😣

i went ahead and added in the greens next, cause they didn't feel as daunting hahaha. i was trying to think of what rebecca was saying about values and making sure that all the areas of the painting played well together, so i was trying to work in pieces 

the beautiful thing about gouache is that since it's so opaque, if you change your mind about a color, you can just paint over it! i did that with the spoons and with some of the leaves on the herbs. i will also say that i didn't have small enough flat edge brushes to get into the tight spots, so some of my edges are pretty messy — i tried to cover them up with colored pencil which ended up working alright, (like, the right side of the pumpkin spice tin was so crooked so i went over it with a paler pink and then colored it in) but i maaaay have gone on blick's website this weekend and bought myself my little flat edge brushes ;•) ☁️

rebecca added in her details using gouache, but i used a white gel pen and colored pencils to do the labels and other small details. i have a hard time doing real pretty, delicate lines with gouache...which is something i oughta practice next time! 

this is the final painting!! i'm pretty happy with how it came out — it was fun to spend a few hours on friday just focusing on color and technique, instead of worrying about if i was messing up a whole "piece" or whatever, which i think would have been the feeling had i come up with the drawing myself. i think that the paprika bottle and pumpkin spice label are too close in value and i should have darkened the pumpkin spice a bit, but these are good lessons to take with me into my next venture!!

i also painted this on sunday:

another little table setting, but a bit more in my style this time ;D i'm not crazy happy with the colors on this (i think the pink vase and the leaves on the flower should be darker, and i'm not certain about the decision to put the stars there) but! i sketched and painted a full piece, and honestly, my main goal rn is just to get better at finishing stuff instead of agonizing over whether or not it's perfect. 

also!! this little framed painting, along with a couple others (once i paint them) will be for sale in my shop come my reopening~ still not sure when that's gonna happen, as i'm waiting on some product to come in, but i'll keep you updated. 

tiny rant: i use vinyl disorder to print my sticker sheets and die cut stickers, and i love working with them, but they recently changed their printer profile and the samples from my recent reorder came out almost neon???? so i've had to do a lot of tweaking and back and forth with them, which is so frustrating since i've worked with them for so long and the colors up to this point have been perfect. so idk what made them decide to change it but it's very annoying >:0 i'm probably gonna end up going with sweetstickers.com to print my die cuts in the future and switch all my sticker sheets to stickerapp. it's frustrating tho cause vinyldisorder's prices are unmatched oof. also! i don't use sticker mule cause their CEO is an avid trump fan and donor and i don't wanna give him any of my money :)

ALSO MY NEW LOAF OF SOURDOUGH TURNED OUT SO GOOD 🌟🌈

the color and the crumb/texture turned out so well :') i probably could have shaped the loaf a little better, to get a better rise, but hey!! next time!! i'll be baking another loaf this weekend, cause this recipe has you save a hunk of the dough which you can essentially perpetuate as a stiff sourdough starter for your next loaf which basically means infinite bread *u*

that's all i got for y'all!! i'm currently editing a new vloggo, which y'all should have tomorrow and the rest of the world will get to see on friday (if squarespace approves it by then haha) i love you lots, and i hope you have a lovely tuesday xxx