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Writer's pictureandreahywong

Distorted

Updated: Feb 11, 2022

Another little watercolour! I've noticed that my paper is getting super crinkly and (ahem!) distorted... so I might move onto some actual watercolour paper some time!


Around January, a guitarist friend of mine gave me his #BOSS #OD2 pedal to use with my electric violin. It started a whole rabbit hole into #effectspedal which you can find here! #pbj This effects pedal has got such a look - a history and stories - from its semi-beat-up look with the scratches and the duct tape. So I thought it'd be a neat object laying around to paint!


Pencil Sketch

I think right off the bat, I actually messed up my #perspective. I was trying to keep my angles and lines #parallel and consistent so it ended up looking like some #isometric drawing but being that I actually wanted to draw it 3D rather than a 2D/more "flat" look, I think I should've adopted a more linear/perspective view where extensions of my lines go towards some #vanishing point.


These photos below make the difference a little more clear than my drawing attempt.







You can tell something is off because at the top of the pedal is a check label and light, and at the bottom, there's a piece of duct tape. But at no realistic camera angle, should I be able to see both. Yet, both can be seen in my drawing!




Ink Outline and Shading

I just love how clean the lines look after outlining. You can tell that I pressed much harder on the OverDrive/Distortion #OS-2 text. It was definitely harder to capture that font. My thicknesses aren't even and honestly, the proportions of my lettering needs work but.. it's a style? haha


I didn't shade too much besides the knob. Perhaps I should've.


I actually forgot about the #BOSS logo on the pedal until after I erased the pencil. It felt really messy too. I think because I tried to capture its popped-up texture by drawing the outline, which ended up making it very chunky-looking.



Colour


Colour #Mixing Yellow + White

Ok, not my favourite/best colour work on this one. I felt I didn't capture the beauty of those #washed #layers in #watercolour art. But here's what I tried and learned!


I started with yellow. Yup. #Pure, straight from #pallete, bright #yellow. I knew the colour of the pedal would need to be a mix, but I thought "let's try just laying down some yellow, and adding orange on top of it!" But then I realized, once the yellow dried, the orange would just cover it no?


Below you can see me mixing white with yellow to get that #creamier #corn colour on the #knob tops. I think that mixture worked alright!

















Colour #Mixing Yellow + Orange


I decided to mix the yellow and orange, and yeah... it ended up looking more accurate. Who knew? I do find it awkward mixing the chalk paints though. Look at what a mess I created on that yellow palette? I was impatient and wanted more of the yellow pigment in the mix. I find it's hard to transfer, but ended up with enough for the painting.


#Shadows/Adding Black

I think this worked alright! While it was still wet on the paper, I added some blends of black paint to create some shadows.


Below, you can see my work on the knobs. Originally I had just black. But the right orange border on the right side slipped into the right-most knob... and I liked the look! So I added a drop of that orange-yellow mix into the other knobs. Low and behold, it was only a matter of time before there was too much water or something hadn't finished drying before an #unwanted #blend would occur. Oh well. Such is #learning and #practice!

I also wasn't too pleased with the black pedal portions. Under the knobs, I kept it relatively light to see the text. On the footswitch with the #BOSS logo, you can really see the #brush #stroke. I think it's due to 1) not using #enough #water to get the smoother gradient, and 2) not covering enough area (which I tried to remedy later).


So the pedal was used when given to me and it had so much #personality with all these marks of usage - the paint scratches, the #duct tape... There's actually still #velcro on the bottom back when it was still on a pedal board!


I tried splattering by tapping the paint brush with some black paint, onto a pencil. But, it was so messy! I tried to control where the #splatter would take place and, if you look closely, you can see that I totally failed! I have black paint specks above and below the pedal and definitely outside the #border. I initially felt that would be an ok look, which is why I didn't bother adding tape to have clean lines. But the splatter just didn't do it:


1) location: the location of where the paint landed definitely wasn't accurate. I think this takes some #experimenting and as always, #practice...


2) size: I felt the #specks were too small - the #droplets needed to be #bigger, and I'm not sure how to do that just yet!


I ended up just painting small blotches of scratches around the borders and corners of the original reference object. I don't have a silver to show the underlying metal shine, so I used black again and thought perhaps as gray, it could look similar. As a result, it just looks like a dirty pedal. Which is an ok aesthetic too! Just not very accurate. I wonder how i could do that next time... perhaps it's not possible with covering the entire surface with that yellow-orange base colour first. Or, with some white pens. I've seen some artists use pens/gels to add lighter highlight colours on top of paint. That could work here!


And the finished dried look! I could definitely have made it look more scruffed up but I like the look of the duct tape with the striations! #practice


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