Tag: original artwork

Banshee’s Wail | Watercolour Painting

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A FAILED PIECE

Hello everyone! I’ve finally had the chance to get this one scanned and uploaded. My latest painting Banshee’s Wail ─ taking on themes of Irish folklore. This year has been a roller-coaster in terms of development of artwork and style. Taking this piece for example. What started off as an idea I couldn’t wait to get on paper, transformed into a drawing I really liked, and by the end something I wanted to bury. In the end, I had to settle for being somewhat satisfied in depicting what I had imagined in my head. I’ve found the best remedy in these situations is to just move on and create more.

Banshee’s Wail, watercolours, 8.25×10.75″, 2021

NEW METHODS

If there was one takeaway from this painting, it was the satisfaction of fine-tuning the preliminary stages of my creative process. I’ve been trying out a different way of developing the initial drawings for the transfer stage. With this method I’d be transferring each individual element/figure one at a time from tracing paper onto the final sheet. The idea is to eliminate the need to erase parts of a perfectly good drawing in the vicinity of another detail being added to the artwork. I’m not sure if this is going to be a permanent process, but it seems useful at the moment for pattern and graphic elements ─ or in the case of this painting, for sheer and translucent subjects. Someone on my Instagram referred to it as “analog Photoshop layers”, which hadn’t occurred to me till now; a fun way to look at it nonetheless.

Soul Collector | Watercolour Painting

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Testing New Brushes

I’ve been meaning to get some new watercolour brushes, as the ones I’ve been using (although having served well for years) are fraying and/or have rogue hairs going in one direction. There are definitely a wide range of brushes out there (which was a tad overwhelming), but after watching some reviews by other artists on Youtube I settled for trying out the Princeton Neptune range. I went for the Round Synthetic Squirrel in 0, 6, & 12 (as they are the sizes I use the most) of the 4750 Series. I’m loving them so far, as the handles in particular feel more comfortable than my standard ones from Deserres or Curry’s.

Preliminary Drawings

I started out with my drawing on tracing paper, eventually transferring the finished product with a graphite backing and tracing all the lines and details. I was sharing this thought on Instagram as well but, does anyone else hate ‘transfer’ days as much as I do?! Recently I’ve been laying some scrap paper as masking (as you see on the right side), just so I have less graphite residue to erase off of my watercolour paper when I’m done transferring.

The finished drawing ready for transfer.

There’s no better feeling than finally getting to put pigment to paper.

You always feel ambitious with the thought of filling a piece with knotwork, until the realization sets in of having to trace said knotwork for a second time accurately. I cheated a bit with this piece as you’ll notice with my preliminary drawing as I drew in only one side; the other side was cheekily transferred by doing a mirror/flip transfer of the paper. I also decided to incorporate some cute little Robins as well; going on themes of death and souls (Robins said to visit people in grief and mourning) for this painting.

Soul Collector, watercolours, 8.5×11″, 2021