Birthday ducks

Story and artwork from Antonio

Hello!

I'm someone who enjoys learning about everything, and art is something I have always loved since as far as I can remember. I don't have a formal art education, but find myself constantly searching new styles, techniques, and ideas to transfer reality to a paper or canvas. I find art as a great refuge to go to after a hard day at job, as something I enjoy doing in company of others and as a way to convey different points of view or express things that words aren't capable of. For the most part I have drawn with pencil, but in the last couple of years I've been experimenting with watercolors, which I find as challenging as fun and surprising. I find it hard to mix colors to get the tone that I desire, specially to paint skin for portraits.

Above all I would say that I want to develop a personal style that is true to myself and easily recognizable by others. I lean towards mixing realistic portraits and figures with abstract or geometric backgrounds, clothes, etc.

I got to know Watercolor Academy thanks to Drawing Academy, and given the quality of the latter, it was obvious to me that the former would be equally good! I have signed up for the free lessons in Watercolor Academy and I have already learned a couple of userful tips from the first video I have watched. This alone proves that the whole academy must be an amazing resource. Contrary to many tutorials and videos on watercolor painting, where things seem to happen "by magic", in your videos every minute contains useful information and "secrets of the trade" are revealed and not hold back, which I love :)

Winning the Watercolor Academy course would allow me to learn properly the technique that I find so hard to control right now, and also to learn to mix colors properly to achieve the color I want, which seems extremely hard to me right now. Also, I'm interested in exploring other techniques like ink + watercolor, as well as achieving a fresh and spontaneous style, typical of watercolor. Right now I paint very slowly and carefully to make it look like I want, but I aspire to achieve more loosenes and make every stroke definitive (I now need to go layer by layer, correcting mistakes, etc). I would also love to learn to paint architecture in watercolor in a style that I have already seen other artists use, which looks real and "dreamy" at the same time, kind of foggy and distant.

Of course people should vote for whomever they prefer! I don't like to force my art onto others, or have to convice them that it's better than it really is, I believe in working hard so that the painting speaks for itself. I have a lot of interesting ideas that I would like to transfer into watercolor, but right now I lack the skill to achieve many of them. I like to use art to express paradoxical ideas or situations that make the viewer think and question things (Escher is a big inspiration for me in that sense). The gaps in my technique is what prevents me from sharing this "visual philosophy" with the world.

For the competition I have decided to include these watercolor ducks, which I painted as a birthday present to my mother. She loves ducks, and I had forgotten it was her birthday, so I spent some hours that same day working on these ducks, and that's the final result. The ducks saved the day hehe.

I appreciate if you have read this far, and thank you for taking the time to do so, have a great day :)

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