Watercolour on brown cardboard. How bad could it be?

Once more, I find myself coming back here after a pretty long break. It is true that I have posted a couple of poems, but not much else. Life has been hectic. Life has been cruel. And I was the one who caused it all.

But I am not here to talk about that, even if I keep saying my memoirs would definitely go under fiction if I ever wanted to write them down and publish them. But since so much of my life is quite personal and I enjoy my privacy, I will probably not write my memoirs after all. It might be for the better.

No, what I am here to write about is another of my artistic endeavours, a relatively new hobby I picked up in the recent year. Watercolour painting. I guess it got triggered by my mom starting to paint herself, but with acrylic paints.

I had bought a tiny box of watercolours that is the same as I used to have as a child. Probably cheap, low grade paints, but I don't care. I'm only doing this for fun, just playing with it.

I started watching tutorials on Youtube, like I often do when I want to learn a new skill. There are many good resources out there. After a lot of such tutorials, I finally decided to give it a try. I had attempted some paintings before, but I wasn't happy with them.

So, I thought I'd make a few small practise pieces. I didn't have proper watercolour paper, so I cut up a small cardboard box and painted on the pieces. Brown cardboard, roughly 10*10cm. Was it a good idea? Probably not for watercolour.

My first attempt was a mutant flower in a blurry field under an overcast sky. I thought it was a bit childish, but my mom liked it and put it in her kitchen on a shelf.

This week, I was at her place and she was doing her painting and I thought I'd practise too, on a new piece of cardboard. I chose a nice landscape, made the sketch and painted it, all in a couple of hours. I had to use white for the sun, since the white of the paper I was supposed to have used was in fact brown cardboard. I also painted over my sketch and got distracted, so I made a couple of perspective errors. The sun rays are not coming from the sun and the bridge's reflection is a bit too low.

But anyway, mom liked this one too. And I must say I'm also proud of it. I guess I'll remake it on bigger proper paper and next time I'll actually avoid the errors I made on this one.

Let me know what you think as well. I don't mind criticism either, I do prefer honesty to flattery.