Category Archives: Nature

A Winter’s Fire

Every winter when the world goes dark,
All we need is a little spark.
From a fire burning steady hot,
I watch it from my favorite spot.

After making countless amounts of fires this winter, it continues to amaze me. There is just something so mesmerizing about a flickering flame. It’s effects relaxes me in a trance-like way. I’m no pyromaniac, but a pleasant controlled fire will probably always be something I’ll cherish.

Now a bit about the painting and the process; I started with some A4 watercolor paper. Hotpressed for a smoother result. In the beginning I chose to mainly focus on the firewood and the rocks around the bonfire. Slowly layer by layer, the piece was building up. It’s usually always hard at the start of a project, but it’s important to just trust the process.

The very first few layers.

As I proceed to add more and stronger colors, there is a lot to keep in mind; mixing of colors, the thickness of the paint, negative spaces, how the paint lightens when it dries, drying time, other methods for drying – a hairdryer, not over-working the paper and so much more.

Darkening the background.

If you want to work with watercolors you have to be prepared for a long and slow process. Not letting the different layers completely dry or throwing on too much color can completely ruin the painting. Of course a lot of mistakes can be saved with several helpful techniques, but avoiding them in the first place is always ideal.

The finished framed piece.

I added a larger black frame with some white space to enhance the artwork. The contrast between light and dark does a very good job at just that.

It was my first time proceeding to paint a fire. As much as a challenge that it was, I definitely also learnt a good amount of new things. Especially when it comes to creating something this dark in watercolors. Now I’m just looking forward to the next one!

The Toucan

I was recently challenged to draw a toucan. I never knew that was the name of this bird. It looks so exotic and has the most beautiful vibrant colors. I wanted to recreate this as best as possible.

For this project I had planned to use watercolors. Not long ago I got this new set of aquarelle pencils from Cretacolor. I thought they would be perfect to use. After sketching the bird, I started filling in the colors. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the pencils worked great on their own. I was scared that adding water would ruin my work. So I kept using these water activated pencils as normal drawing pencils. I’d say that they worked better than I had expected. It feels like the color is thicker on the paper. I didn’t get the same dry feeling as with normal pencils. It was more satisfying to draw with and I will actually keep using them a lot like this.

Recently I’ve been working on some other projects. This has been making new websites and web games, like this one. I’ve been picking up a new hobby, which now has been coding. I can’t wait to work on bigger projects! I’m also so thankful for my friends who keep helping with this and staying patient with me xd