Looking through some of my older pieces, I’ve realized this painting among a few others, have not yet made it the blog. This was done in October of 2022, as part of an experiment to see how my paintings could translate into bookmarks and other smaller products.
Laying down the first few watercolour washes over the pencil line-work.
I knew what I wanted for the concept of this painting, but was forced to work around the other design elements; such as the Celtic knots & negative spaces, which would work well for the composition of a bookmark design. The goal was to create a piece designed specifically for the dimensions and purpose of the product, rather than have one of my paintings slapped onto a bookmark template. I haven’t had many opportunities to work with graphic design, so I’ve been experimenting with creating pieces specifically for certain formats and hopefully other materials too.
This Monday The Changeling Artists Collective on Facebook will be hosting the auction for original artwork, prints, and drawings from the Woven Path Tarot Project. My watercolour painting will be part of the auction, as well as many other wonderful pieces from this Tarot project. XII. Death is my contribution to the deck; the original painting (without digital edits) varies a slightly to what will be seen in the finished product. So if you’re looking to get your hands on the original piece, please head over the link below to participate in the bids or BIN (buy it now) option. *Please note that the BIN option is only available for a limited time before the auction begins.
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.
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.
As usual I started with a drawing on tracing paper, although you’ll notice I didn’t add the flowers. Sometimes with more simpler design details, I’ll go in directly to the watercolour paper. The drawing isn’t really meant to be ‘finished’, just the line-work (the simpler the better) so I can do a graphite-transfer onto the paper. I’ve also stopped printing my line-art/drawing, as I used to for transferring drawings. Personally, I haven’t been finding the need to waste more paper; a sharp pencil over the tracing paper drawing works fine. I’ll usually scan the drawing before I get started on tracing with graphite, so as to preserve all the lines I originally had for reference.
It’s often too hard for me to capture the transferred drawing on my watercolour paper. I’ve usually erased quite a bit of the graphite so it’s barely visible when I lay down paint.
Although my head’s buzzing with ideas at the moment, this month has been rather slower than I would have liked. I had been struggling with the usual artist block, which returning meant too many ideas all at once. In hopes of improving whilst simultaneously creating new artwork, I’ve decided to do some mini drawings.
Call of the Sirens, watercolours on paper, 8.5×11″, 2018
The tape finally came off this one, as I added some final touches this week. Probably one of my more enjoyable pieces that I’ve done so far; I worked at a more casual pace while working on some other things.
I also attempted to take more progress shots this time around, as more people seem to enjoy these on Twitter and Tumblr. The initial drawing was done with graphite on paper, and then transferred onto the watercolour paper from a scanned print.
Call of the Sirens, graphite on paper, 8.5×11″, 2018
We’ve been getting some gloomy days in Toronto the last couple days, definitely not the best for photography… 😦 However, I’m glad to had this one up at last. ~ Sebastian Verlac from Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, painted in watercolours.
Art of Shaima 