As of Friday, the 13th schools have closed and curfew has been imposed in Colombo. While our school still has a rigorous distance learning program to keep busy I was unsurprising completely bored by the end of the first week. Not being able to attend art club anymore I decided to use the time I had to work on my sketches and portraits. This has been an overarching goal of mine for this year and I plan to use this time work on my art. I plan to draw as often as possible and try to increase my depth detail in terms of portraits.

Wanting to try something new I’ve begun to start using charcoal over graphite for my sketches. I’ve also been working on charcoal sketches and figure drawings. Charcoal is a fairly novel media for me and I’m excited to see what type of work I’ll be able to create in the future. So for I’ve done a few charcoal sketches and find that while it is a tough medium to control it allows you to create sharp distinctions between light and dark areas in a drawing.

I’ve also had the time to work on watercolor pieces which do usually take me about 4 hours to complete since each layer of paint has to dry completely before I can move onto the next. Inconsiderate of being stuck at home all day having the time to really work on a piece and being able to spend hours on minute details is something I definitely enjoy.

In the weeks to come, I hope to move on from monochromatic paintings which is the usual path I take with watercolor. I’ve often found skin tones and color

confusing and difficult to create using watercolor and often resort to monochromatic art. So in the next few weeks, I hope to challenge myself to use a larger spectrum of colors in my paintings.