Sellisternian: A self-portrait playing out in twelve parts and across the four seasons.

Prologue: The Dry Run

It's currently the no man's land between Christmas and New Year, time that I've put aside to do a practice painting before starting Sellisternian. The largest that I worked for 2022's projects was A2 after mostly working A3 in 2021. For Sellisternian I'll be using Imperial sheets so a little under twice the size of A2. This increased scope is very exciting but I'm planning a couple of changes to my process to help me get the most out of it.

First, an initial 'sketching' stage on big paper with brush and ink. My thumbnails are usually small, if I do them at all, and I'd like this extra stage to help me see what I can fit on the page. This way I can also lay out sketches for all three paintings in a season and see how they do or don't flow. Last year I really enjoyed sketching with brush and ink, it's not a medium that I get precious with and it feels like a good warm up for painting.

Second, drawing my outline digitally and then transferring it on to my final paper. I work in a lot of layers so I don't usually mind working over eraser marks and extra pencil lines, they tend to just get absorbed under all the paint. However Sellisternian pieces will be more complex than Inhabitants pieces and it will be great to be able to resize and scoot individual elements as I wrangle with the larger compositions. Especially hands! And Sellisternian will be across multiple pieces so it will be great to be able to easily tweak each seasonal trio.

So here's how this dry run went! Scroll down for some in-progress pictures and down to the bottom of the page for a list of the materials I used.

Ranni is a character from the 2022 video game masterpiece, Elden Ring. She's a mysterious soul who lives in the body of a big four-armed doll and has a second, ghostly face. Elden Ring has a lot of gorgeous imagery but for Ranni I wanted to include the night sky, a gold element and tree branches. I've wanted a Ranni painting for a specific blank spot on my bedroom wall for months now so it was a good opportunity to test the new process!

I taped my sketch paper to an A1 canvas panel, just washi tape as my usual surgical tape would probably shred it. I did a very loose pencil outline with the board leaning upright so I could see the whole thing and then laid it down for details. Same with the brush and ink, the paper pilled a bit for very dense areas but I'll only be doing one layer so it doesn't bother me.

The ink sketch showed me that I wanted Ranni a couple of steps back to give me more space for the textures of her clothes and the foliage. I use Clip Studio Paint for digital drawing and greatly appreciated being able to easily resize and angle her FOUR arms and head(s). I also nudged her up to the top left of the composition, she's a very secretive and aloof character so it fit her better than the full frontal position of my ink sketch.

I used the website Rasterbator to split my digital drawing across nine sheets of A4 and (clumsily) taped them together. I taped my beautiful watercolour paper to an A1 board with ol' relaible surgical tape and made the transfer with A4 graphite paper sheets and a mechanical pencil. I'm glad I got to practice this stage because it was very irritating wrangling the printout and the graphite sheets, in future everything will be taped down together!

Back to familiar territory next and finishing the sketch with Polychromos pencils. Darkest values and some textures went down in acrylic ink next, a blessedly fast drying medium so there weren't too many smears as I moved over the large surface of the paper. I used a craft stencil to draw in a honeycomb pattern on the inside of her hat and grey fineliner to add a subtle lacey pattern to her white dress.

Watercolour is the main event and I had been concerned about applying it on a larger painting. I like to use granulating pigments whose effects need big juicy washes. I just knew I wouldn't be waiting for washes to dry before moving in to other areas and I didn't want poor Ranni to get a big streak of paint to the forehead due to my impatience and errant elbows. This was good practice and no water jars were harmed in the process. I could also take a birds eye photo to get a better overall look of the painting in-progress.

So far so good! Now for the 'finishing' layer of Polychromos, fineliners and wax pastels. I could finally use white paint to add the detail to the spectral second face and gave her some blue dotwork tattoos. I love to finish with a generous sprinkling of chunky gold gouache which I flick on with an old brush, it only really shows in person but it's my favourite way to mark the end of a painting.

Ranni is now up on my wall, looking lovely and judging me as I type in my pajamas. I'm so glad that I did a practice round, I know I'll feel more confident going in to 2023 and starting Sellisternian. I've already tweaked my workspace and ironed out a couple of friction points so to Future Ailsa; You're Welcome!