This is a small watercolor painting I did as a birthday gift to Steven. I know it looks random, but it basically represents one logo giving birth to another. (The orange being the company where Steven, Andy, and I first met, and the little gear wheel inside representing our current team logo.)

It's been such a long time since the last time I touched watercolor, or rather, any traditional medium at all. Working as a motion graphic artist, my job never requires me to draw anything traditionally. I do do some sketches occasionally, but even that's done on my Cintiq.

It only makes sense considering how convenient and time efficient digital painting is. 

I used to think back in college, painting digitally can never top using traditional mediums. I had some sort of pride about this, and it was almost an excuse for me not to learn to use photoshop or flash. I quickly realized not learning them was a big disadvantage, and decided to delve into it. 

Once I became comfortable painting digitally, I fell in love with it. 

I loved how easily I was able to reverse mistakes, and the choices of softwares I had for different types of artwork. Not getting any paint on my hand was also a plus. 

All my paint tubes, pencils and brushes rested somewhere deep in my drawer and never saw the light for years since then, until a few weeks ago, I took them out to work on this painting. 

From the first brush stroke to last, I was reminded how much I loved to paint traditionally. 

I loved mixing colors to get the color I want, using the right amount of water to get the opacity I want.. and the ability to zoom in closely and work on small details without seeing pixels.

I'm glad Steven asked me to do a painting because it woke up the artist in me. I still have a long way to go in terms of skills, but it really motivated me to paint more. In fact I've been watching watercolor tutorials for hours the past few days. I even ordered more paints and some brushes from online. Watercolor was something I always didn't feel confident using. (I mainly used acrylic) I loved the look of it, but didn't have the skill and knowledge to do it right. I plan to watch more tutorials and practice more, and hopefully I will have something worthy of sharing it here.