Spring 02: 15/04/2023

This week I completed the first piece in Sellisternian's spring themed trio. You can catch up on last week's work here, the overall idea for Sellisternian here and my practice for this process here.

It's time for the spring series and a sense of sunlight through clouds, rain drops, fresh foliage and flowers forming from the elements. I begin, as usual, with an imperial sheet of Fabriano Artistico 300gsm, hot pressed watercolour paper, taped to an A1 canvas board. A graphite transfer of my digital sketch and details added in black Polychromos, blue Polychromos for the water drops.

Lots of yellow in this series! Yellow pen to outline the pattern in the background and the veins of the foremost leaves. The more receding leaves are veined in green and pink. Blue pen to detail the portrait elements and add some weight to the rain and snow drops. The snow drops will get a bit of shading but mostly stay as the white of the paper.

On to the acrylic ink layer, starting with a lemon yellow filling in the background pattern. It already looks lovely and springy and I already feel the painting come together. I pop that yellow in to the eyes and a bit of the snow drop stems too. I wash the rain drops with plain water and then dab cool phthalo blue in to them, using the left over to lightly shade the portrait elements and snow drops. I also used wet in wet for the sunny orb in the top left, with yellow ochre.

On to watercolour, the best bit! To knock back the yellow of the background I used a light wash of PG50 and PV19, a soft raincloudy mix. I put a little quinacridone gold over the sunny orb and warm teal on the water drops and stems. A light ochre and magenta wash went in the portrait areas.

Green is a magical colour in watercolour but I managed to cut it down to three mixes to use across the foliage:

Green Apatite Genuine (Daniel Smith mineral based paint) A deep green that waters out to lime green with dark brown granulation.

Phthalo Green (PG7) and Manganese Violet (PV16) A cool, vivid green with purple granulation.

Phthalo Green (PG7) and Lunar Earth (Pbr11) The brown neutralizes the vivid green to make a desaturated but complex green/grey/brown. I also used this mix in the eyes.

I dropped a bit of teal or quinacridone cold in each leaf as it dried to push the pigment around further. Basically this watercolour layer was all very washed out except for the more saturated leaves. That all needed plenty time to dry, ready for the finishing layer.

I finished rendering the portrait elements with coloured pencil, trying to keep it light. Then a bold scarlet pencil runs across the branches like veins, branching out and over the leaves. A touch of shading for the snow drops and yellow to bring out the rain drops. Blades of grasses were sprung out all over the place with a deep green wax pastel and all that was left was the splash of gold gouache!

It's nice to be able to look between this finished painting and the rainy spring day out of my window. I see a new year's sun shining through them both. I love the way the leafy branches are bowing down with the rain and snow drops, If these are my building blocks for the next two pieces I'm confident that I can make a beautiful finale to Sellisternian.

Meanwhile, in the landscape sketchbook! Looking at these I notice how little the sky figures in to my landscapes, I tend to finish them quickly and then move on to the more interesting, textured ground. Maybe I'll change my mind about that as the year brightens and my eye is drawn upwards more often.

I think my trees are reaching new levels of blobbiness and that's not a bad thing! Out on my walks I see them finally filling out with buds and leaves after the long winter of gawkiness. I'm looking forward to drawing more lush grass and foliage as the days go too.

I've been dipping in and out of this Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. I think I'll be doing a lot of landscape over spring and summer but I would like to start ambitious portraiture with some fun symbolism and still life over autumn and winter and this is getting the cogs turning.

Next week I'll move on to the second piece of the spring trio. If that update is already up I'll link it below, otherwise thanks for reading this early and have a great week!