Learning through copying

• 2026-02-08
• diary

Yesterday I've continued learning the Naive illustration style of old childrens book, this time focusing on Janosch "The trip to Panama". For me, learning of a particular style is always best through copying, especially when a new media (watercolor + ink) is in play.

Above is the final ink + watercolor sketch. It would have taken just a few hours if everything went right. It did not.

I started in the morning, hopeful to finish the sketch after my second coffee.

It all went well with the pencil, and I then traced them all with the fountain pen.

Despite reading for dozens of times that the default for ink is to not be waterproof, I never chekced. This was the result of me trying to apply watercolor on my ink lines.

I then resketched everything again with a pencil. While tiresome, it actually was very good practice to do it twice in a day.

I applied watercolor directly on pencil. Then applied the ink on top after it dried, which kind of worked, except that the paper now had the ... rubbed in texture that happens to cheap paper after applying water. That made the ink expand and cause super thick lines, and I had to drop any fantasies of drawing precise stuff at this scale.

I have plenty of notes about my beginner mistakes:

• must buy proper watercolor paper (cotton) - this one just does not work.
• must use ink before watercolor, but use proper ink
• must use proper watercolor if I want watercolor effect (duh) - I used guache but it had too much pigment or something and being diluted made it create weird dots
• must avoid trying to spread color by rubbing the brush around on the paper, which just creates messy blobs.

That will be a good start. Till next time.

Translated from the Lithuanian original at https://sutemudirbtuves.lt