Victoria, ink and watercolor

November 8th, 2007

(how can hothouse flowers bloom in an afternoon salon?)

Click the image for the full painting. I also posted the inked version some time ago.

She is a little twilight sparrow!

I planned a pale yellow/gray/blue color scheme for this, with some abstract patterns in magenta for accents. And then — and then it got way out of control. I can only say, in my defense, that when one is happy one cannot help expressing it, even if it is done in unnaturally cheerful rainbow colors. Also — yes, horror vacui. Sometimes I don’t even notice I’m piling all sorts of images and patterns onto my work, since my head is pretty much that disorganized and full of useless potpourri.

I really enjoyed painting this, not only because of the bright palette but because I also got to experiment with different brushes and the actual… water-ness of watercolor! To be honest I was a little tempted to add more depth to it but then again I liked how light it looked, so I stopped. After all, I’ve ruined too many things by not stopping before I went overboard.

The painting was mostly finished last night, but I retouched the right corner to… balance things out a little. I also — heh — signed my name. I always forget to do that.

Scanning made the colors sort of weird (especially the darker ones) and failed to capture the variation in the hair (there’s something wrong with my scanner in that it scans the middle part of the image with less accuracy) but everything else is okay, I didn’t have to retouch the whole thing. The original is still slightly different, though. My father suggested auctioning it off or selllng it but I’m much too attached to it.

Currently working on the Murasaki drawing. I’m very tempted to buy a set of markers and color it that way.

Entry Filed under: visuals