This is the first “45″. At this point I was just trying all sorts of stuff on the watercolor paper. Having been YEARS since I had painted anything with watercolors, I was just messing around. Actually there seems to be a lot more other paints and inks and pencils.

I had this inkjet print of a doodle I had done (and vectorized) and was curious to use it in something. Since this painting wasn’t going so great, I decided to cut out the print, all fancy like, and just add it to the piece – or in this case, cover most of it! After sealing it with Matte Medium, and seeing how the ink bleed and knocked everything down, I LIKED it!

So the lesson is, if you don’t like something you are working on, just keep adding s***t until you do!

scobot 45 No.1: Watercolor, ink, pencils, inkjet print 8.25″x 8″

Detail pics:

This is the second “45″ I did as I liked the first one so much I thought I’d try another! This one has a lot more watercolor “tightness” to it, some colour pencils and since that just didn’t seem like enough, I added this inkjet print cut-out character (which is a vector version of one of my doodles).

I actually like how the matte medium “bleed” the inkjet print of the character, kind of gave everything a unified look and brought out some depth to the watercolors.

scobot 45 No.2: Watercolors, Coloured Pencils, inkjet print 8.25″x 8″

 ”In progress” pictures

This is the third in the series “45″. I didn’t start out trying to make a series, just had a book of sample types of watercolor papers. I believe the first two 45′s I did were on the wrong side – as this one is done on the side with the paper maker’s mark (which I didn’t notice until I was well on my way painting this! oops).

Obviously this is a lot more “tight” than some of my other work. It just seemed to head there. Mostly this is me just trying to get used to working with watercolors – not sure I ever did, but I liked how it came out. Picked up a few tricks that I hope to remember. I was proud of how SOME of the bubbles came out – not all – but some came out really good and are my favorite part of the painting.

Not sure if this represented my emotional state at the time or not (underwater, air hoses getting tangled) but the suit does look nice and cozy.

scobot 45 No.3: Watercolors, Coloured Pencils 8.25″x 8″

LARGE version and some details:

I kind of forgot I had done this! So now, the piece must speak for itself. I THINK this all happened very fast and I neglected to “document” the process – which I am finding is not all that important for EVERYTHING I was thankful that I had stopped just before doing “too much” – which is always the temptation: “Hmmm, what if I take another swipe at it with THIS?” – nope, set my pens down and walked away.

scobot5: ink on board 14″x18″

More details, and one LARGE version:

Early on, I was cutting out doodles and sketches and gluing them (collage like) into my sketchbook – making new compositions out of the elements. Now I mostly store my doodles in tool box drawers so that I can easily “get at them” for use in other ways. But I thought these were kind of interesting and they represent an important phase in of my “artist evolution”, so decided to share them.

I was also REALLY getting into cutting out around the pages, so that when one overlapped with the next page – the two created a “new” composition – kind of fun, an idea I may revisit someday.