Muses - Erato

Muses: Erato

Size: 7x11 inches

Medium: ink on bristol board

From ancient Greek mythology, Erato was one of the nine muses. She was the muse of love, and lyric and erotic poetry.

Aerial silk dancing sketches

Sketches for another Dreamdance Oracle card. This one's called "The Precipice", with aerial silk dancing. Spent a while this morning watching videos on youtube of various performances, and doing some gesture drawings as I watched, to get the feel of it.  I've actually tried doing it myself once, and I can say it's one the hardest things I've ever attempted!  My whole upper body was sore and feeling like jelly for an entire two weeks. And ropeburn.  Oh my, the ropeburn! Gave me new appreciation for the people who do this and make it look so serene and effortless.

 

Keyword Sketch cards

Clockwise: draconic, ecstasy, phoenix, performer, phoenix, foxes, dragon

The Still and Silent Places

The Still and Silent Places

Size: 18x23 inches

Medium: Watercolor on illustration board

Originals, prints, and closeup views available -here-

From the sketchbook:

 

And some more:

 

Mixture of stuff in the sketchbook.  It's because I had two separate painting ideas floating around in my head at the same time. For this particular piece though, the initial inspiration came about from an impromptu ink sketch I did in someone's book.  This piece:

The shape of the tree in the page, and the birds crowded into the hollow of it started tugging at my brain, and so I wanted to develop that concept some more. After a couple days of sketchbook scribbling, I pulled the disparate parts together digitally to create this composite sketch:

Refined, finalized sketch that was transferred to the illustration board. It took about 7 hours to do this. The size is 18x22 inches. Changed the girl's face a bit, but aside from that, stuck pretty close to the initial sketches.

Color rough. Playing around in photoshop with possible colors for the piece. Set the sketch on a top layer, set to Multiply. Then I paste in some background watercolor textures from other paintings, and fiddle with the color levels and balance to get the tones I want. This took approximately 3 hours.

Early stages:

About 7 hours into the painting process. Still building up the background tones.

After painting most of the background, I used Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground on some of the branches that had gotten too obscured with blending background colors. This is the first time I've used the watercolor ground. A blog reader recommended it to me some time back, and I bought it, but hadn't had the opportunity to try it out until this piece. Unlike other white options for watercolor (like using gesso, or whiteout, or acrylic, or my favorite gel pens), using the ground essentially gives you a white paper-like surface to paint on again. It takes the pigment as paper would (the main purpose of the ground being that you can actually use it to prepare non-paper surfaces for watercolors. Like a canvas, or glass, or wood. Something else I do want to use it for in the future!)

The palette:

Finished:

A couple of ink sketches

Just a couple of ink sketches today...

Where the Shadow Used to Fall

Where the Shadow Used to Fall
Size: 19x29 inches
Medium: Watercolors
Detail views, original painting, and prints: -here-


This was the original tree that inspired this piece. It's an Italian stone pine. You might notice that the final painting looks nothing like it.

At first I stuck pretty close to it. Had the title in mind already. And a vague concept of the piece. But it didn't quite gel. This was the initial sketchbook scribble:

I was actually all set to go with this composition. Wasn't 100% satisfied with it, but I figured I'd been noodling around with the sketches long enough; best to just try and paint and see what happened. But then Dragoncon happened and distracted me for a couple of weeks, so it got set aside.  And then I got caught up working on the first few cards for the Dreamdance Oracle, and it got pushed aside some more.

A few months passed.
The permits finally came through and the tree did get chopped down. I miss it. And in the intervening weeks, I had also somehow gotten embroiled in an effort to save a huge grove of redwoods, oaks, and other trees in our local park from being cut down.  "Why is everyone around us so intent on chopping down trees??" Dana sighed the other day.

One night, I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, and the approach I was looking for finally hit me -- to have the night sky showing through the silhouette/portal/shadowform of the tree. Hopped out from under the covers (trust me, the idea had to be good, to convince me to leave the warm sheets for the chilly air in my office) and ran to scribble the thumbnail and words down in my sketchpad.

---

We walked once where the shadow used to fall:

  watched the eclipse blot out the sun,

    and the streaming beams between the

      pinhole gaps of leaves became

        a cascade of glowing crescents across the ground.

Where the shadow used to fall,

  the rain did not.

    Dense, dry, fallen carpet of the years

      pooled at the Giant's feet.

        Blanket of crisp leaves and needles. Sap and compost.

My shadow falls, where its shadow used to fall;

  and when the sun fades to my back,

    I stand upon the hundred rings.

    I reach my fingers up up UP to a ghost canopy.             

    The sunset melts amber sap down my shoulder blades,

      down my spine.

        And I watch as my shadow grows tall,

          then melts into the shadow-less evening.

Clockwise: Ignorance, Courage, Persephone, Raven, Storyteller, Dragon, Liberty, Eagle