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wovenlines — Little Mermaid
Published: 2013-03-15 05:00:44 +0000 UTC; Views: 3679; Favourites: 123; Downloads: 85
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Description
"Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote..."A little something I did just for myself.
Ink and watercolour on cotton paper.
March 2013
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Comments: 20
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Oh, wow!
Absolutely stunning!
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I featured this piece in my journal. [link]
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I like the idea of a mermaid looking seahorse-like rather than fish-like. Great composition and colours too.
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It happened very organically; I started with the model pose and was playing around with sketches trying to come up with something that would suit it. The shape of her back reminded me of the curve of a seahorse and so that's what came out. Once I'd done it I quite liked it compared to the usual fish bottom half, too.
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Beautiful! I really love the texture. And the colors. And the mermaid design! If you don't mind me asking, how do you scan your whites so white?
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Thank you very kindly.
Of course I don't mind a technical question! I scan them at 600dpi on my flatbed scanner, then use photoshop's exposure filter to lift the whites to white. The paper itself isn't white, so some of the finer painterly detail may be lost, but I try to combat this by also boosting the gamma/contrast.
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Thanks! I've never played with those settings before...I usually make a half-hearted effort with Levels but by the time the clean paper is white the painting looks overexposed. I'll definitely take a swing at this. Thank you!
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I also tend to illustrate on the whitest paper I can find. Saunders Waterford do an extra white these days which is nice and bright compared to a lot of other brands.
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Thanks, I'll give that a shot. I recently switched from Arches 140 to Stonehenge, a printmaking paper, which has a great texture but is a natural white. But I'm looking forward to experimenting more!
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Fabriano are also doing more watercolour paper these days. I tend to be a bit wary of printmaking paper because I find a lot of it doesn't cope with water as well; sometimes it degrades after only a couple of washes, or dries unevenly, or doesn't fix properly for subsequent washes. It seems like maybe that wouldn't be such a problem with your work, though, since it looks like you paint in single wash blocks? I really like your work, by the way. Is it a combination of digital and traditional or all traditional? I find the crispness of your line-work really quite remarkable!
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Yeah, I tend to do one or two washes at most, though I have run into problems when lay a wash over the whole page as a base. Afterwards the second layer of color is more likely to dry with hairy edges...also, erasing an area more than once is risky, because the surface rips up FAST. But I'm really happy with how it scans so it'll do for the time being.
Thanks! It's traditional and digital! The digital is all using the pen tool, so that leads to really sharp areas of color - which I like, but sometimes I feel like I want a more natural approach! That's something I really love about your work; you're not afraid to let the watercolor be watercolor, and use vignetting.
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