Finished this class - my first Skillshare class! - a couple days ago, but only got around taking pictures of all the exercises today (: First things first: I really enjoyed this class, because it makes you go back to the basics and some of the drills (I'm looking at you, lines!) are surprisingly difficult, meaning I'll definitely go back to them from time to time.

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 1 - student project

The first exercise didn't give me too much trouble, but I enjoyed comparing the different ultramarines and magentas from my different watercolour sets. One thing I noticed is that I sometimes use too much paint for the darkest shades, so that's something to keep in mind for future paintings.

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 2 - student project

The dreaded steady lines. I will definitely be getting back to these because this is not a satisfying result for the exercise, haha. Most of the time my lines seem to be leaning one way or another and slightly thicker lines are much easier to get straight than the smaller lines. I hadn't noticed that lines were a problem for me before this because when I paint it's usually fine - it's just when I have to fill a whole page like this that it apparently becomes an issue :')

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 3 - student project

This was pretty fun to do and the lines for this were a lot easier than the whole-page-steady-lines exercise (: It also reminded me that blues are my favourite. Greens are great too, but there's just so many beautiful blues and I don't dislike a single one of them! Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 4 - student project

Not much to say about this one - patience is the key for clean edges and while I still misjudge how wet the paper is from time to time, I usually don't have a problem with this c: For the little blobs on the bottom right I much prefer the ones without a pencil border, which surprised me a little!

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 5 - student project

Except for the wet on dry blend, I'm pretty happy with this! No idea what exactly went wrong with the wet and dry blend, but I'm guessing I used too much water and went back to it too many times. I should have just left it after the first time although it wasn't perfect, and it would have been better than this, haha.

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 6 - student project

I love the cobalt turquoise in the wet on dry flat wash. It's such a pretty colour - then again I say that about a lot of colours. I think I need to practice graded washes some more, because I had some trouble with the amounts of water I used (:

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 7 - student project

So! This is where things started going a little overboard, haha. I started looking up pigments for different paints because I don't have any Winsor & Newton watercolours. The artist's quality Winsor & Newton paints are pretty difficult to get here (China), which is why I've got some other brands instead. I really don't like the Paul Rubens' payne's grey because it's more like indigo, but other than that I only have Schmincke's payne's grey bluish. Doing this made me realise I could use some more different earth tones because the Paul Rubens ones aren't that great and the ones in my Schmincke set are almost all opaque, which I find a bit of a pain to deal with for mixing :')

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 8 - student project

Based my selection for the first Schmincke split primary palette on their 12 colour set as well as the suggestions from the class. Maybe it was just the time of day, but I wasn't too inspired to mix that much with these colours, although some of the colours are absolutely lovely and I'm glad I know how to mix them consistently now (for example the cold blue + cold red and cold red + warm blue combo). The phthalo green and lemon yellow combo also pops in real life, but not quite as much as in the picture, haha.

Watercolor Boot Camp Drills - image 9 - student project

A limited palette that's a bit different, but I really like the mixed colours. Particularly the blue mixes with cobalt turquoise are such lovely blue shades that I think would be fun to use in combination with some of the orange-y/brown mixes. Neutral tint didn't seem quite as useful as payne's grey and I'm not sure I like yellow ochre or burnt sienna that much. Comments and advice for this split primary palette would be particularly appreciated because I tried doing things a little differently with this one, but don't know if I broke some (un)written palette rules here :')

Right! The class was very, very helpful for me to become better acquainted with my watercolours after I've had a break from them for quite some time. I've always liked the medium and these are very fun exercises that are easy to follow thanks to Jen's great instructions (: Can't wait for the next class!

Nele

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