My first 10 life drawing sessions

Last night, it was my 10th time going to a life drawing session since I started this Summer. Here is a selection of my art from each session (in chronological order). Each time I tried a different approach just for the sake of challenging myself and having fun. So far I've tried with ink, poster colours, oil painting, watercolours, and pastels. There are long pose sessions (1 or 2 hours) and short pose sessions (20', 10', 5', 3').

Nishizawa valley hike

I joined a meetup in August and hiked the Nishizawa valley (西沢渓谷 - Nishizawa Keikoku) which is famous for its 7 waterfalls. You can find some Japanese leaflets scanned here and here.

We met at 8:15 AM at Enzan station (JR中央本線 塩山駅) and took a bus (山梨交通) towards the bus stop 西沢渓谷入口バス停 from where we started the hike. You can see my GPS log on Google Earth for a detailed description of the route. If you want to take your own I suggest using the "Easy GPS logger" application on your smartphone. It produces a .gpx file that you can read from Google Earth.

The hike was really pleasant. Most of the route goes through a forest along a river with wonderful waterfalls. Definitely a nice mountain to try in Summer.

You'll also have the chance to cross a hanging bridge. Nothing to be scared of!. After the hike, we went to a Japanese hot spring (onsen) for a relaxing bath. Finally, I had some grapes from this region (Yamanashi prefecture) and went back home by train.

Trace watercolour painting

One of the advantages of language learning is that it gives you access to literature that wasn't available to you before. For example, I learned a lot from reading Ken Morita's book 誰でもたちまち絵がうまくなる「トレース水彩画」入門 (Anyone can quickly become a good painter, "Trace Watercolour Painting" introduction) on Kindle unlimited.



If you can't read Japanese, check out his Youtube videos. They are mostly self-explanatory. Let's try and follow Morita's procedure.

First, you trace a picture into watercolour paper. It's important that you use quality tracing paper. I tried with cheap tracing paper and it didn't work well. If you can afford it I suggest buying Pilot's carbon plastic paper. The watercolour paper should have no texture, the smoother the better.

Next, use black ink and water to paint it in grayscale. Painting in grayscale first makes the process easier because you can focus on the lights and shades without having to think about the colours at the same time. It's important that the ink you use becomes waterproof when it dries. I suggest Pilot's ink or any other ink brand used by comic artists.

Once the grayscale layer dries, start applying the watercolours. Begin with light colours, then apply darker colours, add a shade colour (e.g. purple) and finish with a white poster colour (gouche) for the highlights. I suggest using a watercolour pan set (I use the Petit color 48 pan set) instead of tubes, it's much easier. Once the colour layer dries stretch the paper by thoroughly soaking it with tap water (don't worry, the watercolours will not go away with the water) and using a set of binder clips. Note that you can do this before painting as well by using gummed watercolour paper tape.

And there you go, this is the result. Probably I should have simplified the lines and chosen brighter colours, but I felt this method really made watercolour painting easier and faster. I didn't talk about more advanced techniques such as masking. I encourage you to watch Morita's videos and explore them by yourself.

Plastic models: Tamiya Sd.Kfz.232 1/48

I recently joined a group of Japanese plastic model fans who meet about once a month in Ogikubo (荻窪) near a famous plastic model shop called Kiyahobby (喜屋ホビー).

On my first day, I was lucky enough to meet and talk with one of the most famous plastic modelers in the world, Mig Jimenez, who was visiting Japan from Spain. I learned a lot from him in just a few hours. I also learned a lot from my new Sensei, Masahiro Doi, who guided me during the application of a surface primer (Tamiya TS-4 German gray lacquer air spray) on my plastic model: an Sd.Kfz.232 German 8-wheeled heavy armored car (Tamiya, scale 1/48). The trick to obtain an homogeneous surface was to apply the air spray with quick strokes. After applying the German gray primer and letting it dry for about 30 minutes, I started painting the shovels, the wheels and the turret. For that I used Vallejo acrylics.

On my second time, Doi-sensei guided me through the process of weathering my model. I started by applying a wash of Tamiya XF-64 Red Brown enamel paint (diluted with about 2 times of Tamiya X-20 enamel thinner) using Tamiya modeling brush HF No.0. The goal here is to give some depth to the model by darkening corners and making the surface more realistic. Then, I removed the excess of enamel paint with a Tamiya craft cotton swab using up-to-down strokes for expressing the aging caused by rain. Once the enamel paint was dry, I applied Mr. Weathering Color Sundy Wash (diluted with Mr weathering color Solvent 110) on the wheels and lower parts of the car to emulate dirty and dust. I used a slightly bigger Tamiya HF modeling brush (no. 2) for that. The result is what you see above!!

Conclusions: I think there are many ways to improve the result, but it's probably good enough for the first time. In the process I learned many things such as the difference between lacquer, acrylics, and enamel paint; or the typical steps in the painting sequence. I also learned that there are many magazines and blogs explaining numerous tricks to make your models even more realistic.