Posy WIP & finished art

I'm rather happy with this one... She's nothing like my original idea, but she's came out rather sweet and extremely colourful for me. I actually had quite a fight between my scanner and Photoshop to show off how vibrant she is without it looking over saturated.

Year's Dawn finished artwork

And that's 'Year's Dawn' finished, even if I didn't get it done in time to make Christmas/ Solstice cards out of at least I got it done before new year. :)

I like the colour palette for this one. I've mostly been sticking to colours that are more harmonious, everything mixed together at least a little, up until now but I'm really happy with the bit of green on her dress and the snowdrops.
I think I'll reuse that mix of an analogous colour scheme (colours next to each other on the wheel) with one colour that sits completely out of it as a focal point. I like the contrast and it feels gentler than just using complementary colours.

I like how the colours on the yew tree merge together and the leaves in the far background came out really well, though the scanner doesn't pick up the vibrancy as well as seeing it in person.

I wish I'd put more effort into her anatomy, though that's partly just trying to paint at that size, she looks rather stiff.

Year's Dawn WIP

It's been a while since I last used coloured pencil, I do like the effect of having coloured line art, it nicely sits between realistic and obviously cartoony? I guess. Using pencil rather than pen also just pushes it a little further towards realistic, it's nearly unnoticeable in the final painting but helps me keep track of where things are, also I can get a larger range of colours with pencil than pen.

I think I'll use this technique more often.

I had a lot of fun doing the leaves in the background....I completely went about this the wrong way though, in stating off on the background I added more detail than it needed.

However by starting on the lightest part of the painting I was also laying down a marker of how dark the rest of it should be...without that guide I think I would have made everything too dark.

Colour swatches and tests for Year's Dawn

It's such a simple idea but it really does save so much time. Basically I painted each colour I own put the name on the back and numbered them, they're easy to loose.

So the reason for doing this: I always test out different colour schemes before starting to paint. Which until now meant I had to paint down the colours together over and over if I wanted to make a slight change to the colour scheme. It actually takes quite a lot of time in the end.

This way I just quickly lay them down next to each other. Then I can just write down the colour names for reference and try out new ones quickly.

It's so simple but I thought I'd share, It'll save me a lot of time.

Blodeuwedd Finished

The finished painting of Blodeuwedd. To be honest I'm not quite sure what I think of this one.

On the technical side yeh I'm mostly happy with her, one of her arms is a bit funny but other than that technically I did well enough. Her face is looking good and the whole leaf/ hair printing random-ness in the background turned out really well, I'm really happy with how it merges with the white of the background. It's a useful technique and I'll definitely use it again.

Year's Dawn Idea and Sketches

I found the inspiration for this one really hard. I nearly always just have an idea pop into my head, refine it a bit and then paint it. I spend a lot of time thinking about the composition and the colours but not actually the concept, just going with what ever thing of interest shows up.

It's been a long long time since I've drawn without an idea before hand.

For this one I knew I wanted to do something winter themed without it being too Christmas-y and with out it being too heavy in the Pagan symbolism either. Something that could act as a Christmas/Yule/Solstice card without only being limited to that.

Blodeuwedd WIP

Blodeuwedd was actually a strange painting for me, both in art style and in how I worked on it. I'll mostly near complete one area before moving onto another. For Blodeuwedd I slowly built up multiple areas at once.

There's some good in doing it like this: Firstly it means one area can dry whilst I work on another, useful for such a large painting. I get an idea of how the overall colour scheme sits quicker and can adjust things in the early stages. Also I am less likely to overwork areas that don't need it.

However.....having your entire painting spending most of the time looking bad can be pretty disheartening. I was already pushing how interested I was in painting her due to doing so many tests for her before hand, adding in the extra time of waiting for her to look good didn't help.

I think in the end I'd probably be best of mixing the two methods, get the important bits like the face near complete and then I can start working on multiple areas at once.

Also working on multiple areas means it's harder to talk about my progress with each picture, you'll probably not notice the slight colour shifts things go through and it's really not worth mentioning on it's own.

Masking out the embroidery on her dress. For the bottom of it I used purple lake, shadow and payne's grey, with a lot of granulation fluid. Her original dress design was very princess-y and I wanted to stain it up a bit.

At this point her skin looks really weird, very much a case of it needing context to sit well though I do tone down the colour later. I think it'll take a while for me to decide if I want to do my painting's skin first because it's important and easy to mess up a face or closer to the end so I can compare it to it's surroundings. Hair first then skin?

Blodeuwedd hair and leaves

I knew for this one that there was going to be a lot of white space I wanted left a clean white, considering I also knew there was going to be a large area of unpredictableness for her hair I went a little further to keep where I wanted paint free. I actually put the masking fluid on top of the cling film for the hard edge of her back, sealing it tight. I've had watercolour escaping to where I don't want it too often in the past.
Also masked out the flowers.

Blodeuwedd Colour and Leaf Tests

One of the challenges I had with this painting was the number of colours. I normally work with three or four different paints and just mix them to get my colour palette but for this one I felt I needed to get the right colours for each of the nine plants Blodeuwedd was made from as well as the colours for her Tawny Owl mask.
I probably would have been more comfortable if I'd just let some of the colours be more stylized, I also didn't realise till too far in that none of the greenery of the flowers was going to be used, I could have cut out some colours there too.

Top: working out each plant colour range,
Left Middle: Colour range for her mask,
Right Middle: Trying to mix colours to cut down the shear amount of different paints,
Bottom Left: Testing out different skin ranges (used the bottom right one,) 
Bottom Right: vague idea for where the colours will go.

Blodeuwedd Stamping Tests

So I've had this idea for Blodeuwedd kicking around for a while, I was wanting to do something inspired by Laovaan specifically this painting: Waves of Nature and I thought I'd throw in some of Kelogsloops' style as well. Except for one thing....I love the look of flowers and leaves in paintings but I get bored quickly of painting them. So I was trying to think of ways of giving most of her hair a plant based feel without hand painting each leaf, my mum suggested I  have a look at Ann Blockley's art. So my neat and controlled Laovaan inspiration wandered off a bit and Kelogsloops vanished completely. But at least I didn't need to paint leaves.