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.

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.

Nocturne

Nocturne

Size: 15x19 inches

Medium: Watercolor, ink, metallics, leafing

Detail closeups, and prints ($16.95 & $26.75) available here

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The original painting will be on exhibit and for sale at Krab Jab Studio during the month of February for the Faery themed group show.

 I feel like I've been wandering through this forest in various paintings in the past few months. I've skirted the borders of these woods, catching glimpses in one painting or another of the golden core tucked in the boles of the trees. So it was time to explore further under those tangled dark branches.

One of the inspirations for this piece was a photo I took of a sycamore at Gilroy Gardens earlier this year. It's actually made of 12 (I think?) grafted trees.

Some initial brainstorming sketches I did while away from my desk over Christmas. At first I was planning to have other nymphs bathing in the pools as well.

The finalized sketch prepared for painting.

And then the tortuous early stages. It's terrifying to meticulously sketch out a piece filled with fine details, and then to pour paint and ink all over it in a big ugly mess. The pencil lines are still there, very faint, buried under the ink. When I do this technique, I have to spray fix the pencil ahead of time or else I run the risk of completely obliterating all that work and ending up with no guidelines.

After letting the large splashes of ink and watercolor dry as a base coat for an hour at least, I can go back and work in details, pulling shapes and forms out of the mess of texture. I use a variety of mediums at this point.

Doing this stuff is my favorite part. I love finding the textures and pulling out form from the random chaos of separating pigments.

I use gel pens to do some finer white highlights and details.

A Gathering

 Magpies: A Gathering

Medium: Mixed - Watercolors, India ink, ballpoint, watercolor ground, metallic powder, sterling silver beads

Size: 9x9 inches

For prints ($16.95), and more detailed closeup views, -click here-

This is a closeup view of a magpie in a 1.3 inch square area of the painting. You can get a close look at the textures of the ink/watercolor/metallic medium.

Silver beads embedded into the board. The board I use is very thick, so I was able to dig out small pockets to insert the beads.

Overlook

Overlook

Size: 8x9 inches

Medium: Watercolors, inks, white ground, metallic mediums

Detail closeups, Original ($399.00) and Prints ($16.95) -available here-

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Some of the in-progress images:

Started off with a random wash of ink, metallic mediums, and a tint of color with watercolors. Turned the board all directions and let the wash drip and flow down the page. After that dried, used a wide flat brush with white watercolor ground and smoothed in some bright spaces.

Then I shoved it in the back of my drawer and ignored it for about 5 months. I have about a half dozen scraps of board like this sitting in my drawer at any given time these days. I just splatter them with paint and texture, and every once in a while pull a few of them out and see what shapes and images I can make out in the chaos. 

Sometimes one of them moves me to try and pull that image out. Some days none of them do anything for me and I shove them back into the drawer. Or  sometimes I decide there's nothing in that chaos at all and splatter another random layer of ink/mediums/watercolor across the page and let it dry to see what that will do to it.

On this particular day this piece started to speak to me. So I pulled it out and started trying to bring the hazy shadow of an image into realization. 

The white streaks reminded me of the delicate rivulets of distant waterfalls. Shadowy trees started carving out the space of the cliffs. And then a golden tree twisting around a spire-like overlook emerged in the foreground.