Art Blog: Watercolor for my birthday month

Hello guys! For this month I decided to work on an old watercolor painting I started months ago, but was unable to finish after having an artist block. Originally I wanted to do a irl+art vlog for this month's paid post (I've started to collect videos earlier this month) but work and school kept me from editing the videos into one coherent vlog. 

After my vlog plan failed, I decided to work on something traditionally, since in the past months I've created only digital art. At first, I started working on Sylph and finished the outline while I was on my birthday vacation. Last night, however, I realized how shitty the watercolor paper I used for this particular piece, so I had to set it aside (for now) and continued with my last plan, which is to work on this Storm Spirit watercolor painting.

I don't remember how many layers of paint I had with this. I always pussy out on my watercolors so I always start with a thin layer, then add more colors and value (am I using the right art concepts) little by little, working around the colors so as to prevent mixing them up. 

I actually started working on this at the same time I was finishing my Sylph outline, jumping from one piece to another, which I learned to be an efficient way to paint from what I watched from Happy D. Artist on YouTube (she's so lovely <3) In doing so, I can let my Storm dry up while I work on Sylph, and at the same time minimize burnout from working on a piece for an extended period of time.

I guess since this is my first time posting about my watercolor paintings (aside from a throwback post I did a while ago), I can share what materials I use for my art.

As you can see in these pictures, I'm using two waterbrushes, small and medium sized; white ink pen and acrylic paint for highlights; a lovely mint mechanical pencil from Faber Castell (remind me to buy refills aaa); mechanical eraser (not shown in picture because I misplaced it); and my box of watercolors. 

So for my watercolors I'm using Sakura Koi 24 colors. I bought this for around 900 php iirc from Sketchbox.ph, which is really cheap compared to other art stores. It comes with a palette, waterbrush, and sponges for cleaning up your brushes (I use tissues instead because I don't want to make my box look messy). It's really compact (6" x 4" according to my estimation heh) and has a handle below where you can slip your finger in if you want to carry it while painting. 

Prior to this I used Lil'Hands watercolors for practicing, and then when I realized how shit the quality was I bought myself the Prang 8 color set. I think I suck at mixing colors with such limited choices so I didn't really enjoy it. Luckily though, I was able to visit Sketchbox's shop along Maginhawa before they moved to Manila and bought the last Sakura 24 in stock. As for my watercolor paper, I used unbranded paper that I bought in a stack from Craft Carrot when they had their stall at the College of Architecture earlier this year. I think the price for a pack of these cards ranges from 150 to 200. My memory sucks balls.

Umm so I think that's enough for now. Hopefully I get to work on better projects in the future like vlogs where I can talk about my art, but sadly 10 units of graduate classes really drain me up both mentally and physically. Pursuing art for this particular period will be like an escape for me, or a form of destressing.