The red die

[eller]

This was for an art chellenge about still life painting. I keep having difficulties with painting glass, its light reflections and refractions, so I chose a rather... challenging... subject. That red die viewed through the faceted glass is easily one of the most difficult things I ever attempted. Also, I chose the wrong paper (the painting was supposed to be purely an exercise initially, so it's not on watercolor paper but on drawing cardboard for dry media, and when the initial drawing became better than expected and I decided to continue, of course I had to continue on that paper) and it kind of dissolved in some places. Still, I think I'm making progress, so that's good, I suppose.

I only used four watercolors in this picture: Lamp Black (Daler Rowney), Mayan Dark Blue (Daniel Smith), Scarlet Red (Schmincke Horadam) and (well, technically not watercolor, but I used it as such) Copic Opaque White.

Comments

[eller]

In my opinion, glass is the single most difficult material to render. Ever. Even in this case, I'm quite sure the sparkle isn't entirely "correct", but hey, no-one is going to check a painting for something like "consistent refractive index" or anything.

As to the Copic Opaque White, I quite like it but it has its oddities... In pure form, it's very difficult to handle. I use (abuse) it by putting a blob of it on my palette and then simply treating it as watercolor. For that, it's extremely good; it's more opaque(and also a purer white) than any white "watercolor" or "ink" I've encountered so far. However, you have to be careful about not layering it too thick because otherwise it will crackle.