In the Wake of Her Passage

 In the Wake of her Passage

19x19 inches

Medium: Watercolor, ink, metallics powders, gold

Detail closeups and prints (8.5x11 inch @ $16.95 and 11x17 inch @ $26.75) -available here-

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The process:

Initial brainstorming ideas. I scribbled some thumbnails. This one came together rather quickly. After the figure with the swirling mist in her wake I already knew the title, and had in mind the colors as well.

A more detailed sketch of the figure, using the first concept as a guide.

 Then I scanned the thumbnail and figure and moved things around in photoshop. Flipping, resizing, determining the background composition.

 Afterwards I transferred the sketch, much more fleshed out, onto the final drawing surface, and lightly sprayed it with workable fixative.

First drippy ink & watercolor washes. Doing this is giving me flashbacks to my Berkeley college art days where it was all about drippy paint and sloshing massive amounts of pigment onto huge canvases. Of course, this is only a fraction of that size, and I'm using the most sinful of mediums - the "illustrator's tool", WATERCOLOR!

 A couple hours later, after it dried, a light fixative spray, and more washes, and then I started in on the distant background to the lower left corner.

 Kept it light so that it wouldn't war with my foreground for attention later.

 Slowly worked my way across the bottom and into a bit of the foreground elements.

 And then up towards the figure.

 I kind of worked in a counter-clockwise fashion on this piece, starting  with the lower left background, then moving up the cascade of pools towards the figures and the trees in the upper quadrants.

Worked my way back along the glowing flowers that had sprung up in the wake, under her feet. Used white gel pen for these, and then blended with paint for shading.

A little bit of gold leaf for some accents.

Background trees.

Wasn't very happy with the shape of the arch, in the left side of it, and I had been putting off dealing with that area for a while. But at this point I had to address it. Finally reshaped the area with some watercolor ground and ink and created a much more pleasing (to me) silhouette.

The owl.

Finishing up the lower foreground areas and incorporating it better with the rest of the piece.

Nocturne: Visitation

Nocturne: Visitation

Size: 15x19 inches

Medium: Mixed

 Prints: 8.5x11 ($16.95) and 11x17 ($26.75) -available here-

Visitation is a companion piece to a painting I did a month ago, Nocturne.

The wanderer's presence has not gone as unnoticed as he presumed. The faerie queen of the woods gazes upon his slumbering defenselessness and muses on what to do with this reckless one who dares to walk the hallowed paths and set eyes upon her.

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Below are the sketches and photos of the piece as it progressed.

Started off initially thinking of a horizontal composition. Later on that changed. Thumbnail of the concept. Grassy circle in the forest, surrounded a stone cairn, and the faerie queen stands over his slumbering form with a lantern in her hand.

Brainstormed sketches for the Faerie queen. Went through many different scribbled sketches trying to find the right attitude.

 And sketch for the wanderer. He came easier, nailed what I had in mind on the first attempt.

At this point I ended up changing my mind on the horizontal composition and moved to a vertical one that matched the proportions of the original Nocturne painting. Cut and pasted the various sketches in photoshop, moved things around, scribbled in a rough approximation of the background.

 Then transferred and refined that onto the final surface.

First washes of color and ink.

 White watercolor ground layered on top, and more washes, and started on some detail on one of the trees.

More details, and some bold red and gold in the foreground

 The wanderer.

 First light glazes on her dress.

Drapery, hair, and face.

The little faeries around her and the lantern.

Picked out the negative space in the tree branches above.

Splatters of gold and red to help tie it back into the lower parts of the painting, as well as some blue/purple glazes.

 More work detailing the trunk textures.

 Gold leafing in the cores of the tree hollows.

And the final result.

Adder Stone

Adder Stone

Medium: Mixed

Size: 12x16 inches

Prints: 8.5x11 inch ($16.95) available -here-

An adder stone that has a naturally occurring hole in it. Such stones were thought to grant magical powers to the bearer, among with was the ability to see through fairy illusions, but also sometimes invisibility, defense against the evil eye, and curative properties.

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Sketches and the process:

 Initial sketches and brainstorming that I did over Christmas while away from my paints and desk. I did a lot of thumbnail drawings in my sketchbook.

This was the initial finalized thumbnail I arrived at. It was only when I was just about to start the meticulous finer sketch that I noticed the figure was almost exactly the same pose as the one in a painting I did in 2012 entitled Firefly Hunters.

So I had to rethink the composition a bit and came up with this instead:

 

First layer of paint to create a base layer of texture.

After that dried, I sprayed fixative so that I could retain the lovely ink textures. Then I started back in with a large flat brush with opaque white watercolor ground, and also started adding tints of color to various sections.

After the main areas were blocked in, I could take smaller brushes and pens and start to pull out the fine details in the background, starting with the background trees.

Started adding more contrast in the foreground elements.

And getting more detailed.