Hello,

I chose the beautiful Zebra reference picture provided for this class as it reminded me of my pony, and I immediately fell in love with it!

I am fairly new to watercolors but I have been drawing and painting since Kindergarten (albeit on and off). I started with my freehand drawing and after trying the grid method shown in class as well as the light tablet (which is what I've been using most to save time, so that I have more time to learn how to paint with watercolors), I realized that my sketch ended up being quite far from accurate despite me having some drawing experience.

This is the freehand sketch, which I ended up with:

Embracing tracing :) - image 1 - student project

The second method I tried out was drawing by using a grid, which was a lot of fun but also took me much longer than the freehand drawing. I also used too much pressure and ended up having a hard time erasing the grid lines afterwards. The markings of the zebra also made it more difficult for me to erase the grid without erasing the stripes as well.

But this is the result (much more accurate than my freehand drawing in my opinion):

Embracing tracing :) - image 2 - student project

As I didn't have graphite paper on hand, I wasn't able to try this method but I used my light tablet for the last sketch and it definitely gave me the most accurate result. The trace lines ended up a lot more subtle than with the other two methods as well.

Here is my light tablet sketch of the zebra reference:

Embracing tracing :) - image 3 - student project

And at last I wanted to add a picture of my freehand sketch with some watercolor added.

It is only a start but this class made me really excited to start painting as I now have three different sketches ready to turn into watercolor paintings!

Embracing tracing :) - image 4 - student project

Here is the final result:

Embracing tracing :) - image 5 - student project

Fabienne Reichelt

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