On the Hill of Roses

Click for larger image

Dust jacket cover I made for On the Hill of Roses, a short story collection by Stefan Grabinski (translated from Polish by Miroslaw Lipinski), to be published by Hieroglyphic Press this summer.

I had a helpful and poetic description from the publisher: '[...] a landscape at dusk, a rose garden with the bloody reds of the bushes merging with the dying sunset shades. The ground might be a dark, almost black green with hint of the sinister in the deepening shadows.' They specifically wanted something in the style and mood of Eventide, loose and impressionistic. So I set out to put my new watercolour skills into preliminary sketches.

Well, 'watercolour skills' might be a bit overrated. But these colour blobs were just what I needed, so I scanned them in and threw more values in PS.

Then I took the two and merged them into a larger, wider piece. I threw in more golden tones because I felt the pinks and lilacs were too subdued, and because the title story is a psychological horror piece taking place in midsummer, so I wanted a small taste of it to seep into this image.

Not forgetting that the right side of the image would be the front cover, I flipped it soon after, so that the focus would be on the right and that it would still work as a whole.

I also added some guidelines to keep my composition together and flowing, and was switching them on and off right until the end.

From then on it was just a matter of rendering. This is frequently the part I have most difficulty with. I tend to overwork my images and they lose the freshness and dynamic their earlier versions have. A lot of the time, I'm just going back and forth between different saves of an image. I was more careful with what details I added and where with this one, so maybe that's why it proved to be a more straightforward process than usual.

It also turned out to be a true digital/watercolour hybrid: in order to preserve the watercolour textures, I kept laying down shapes in watercolour, then scanning them and adding them to my main image:

(All this from my 'upgraded' workspace, no less)

Nelleke's forest

A tiny (10.5x10.3cm) watercolour study, from this lovely photo by Nelleke.

(A very early stage can be seen in the previous post.) :)

Hammeln

More watercolours tonight. My mother has come home for the holidays and set up her own workspace in the living room, which made me realise the light there is infinitely better than the one in my room. So I joined her and painted this:

Reference is from National Geographic.

Calton Hill

A small watercolour piece I made in mid-November as a birthday present for a friend. She likes green and greenery, which is something I learned to appreciate very much while painting this: green is so restful to work with! It's almost like eye-food, or something. :)

It was referenced from a photo I took in Edinburgh in 2009, at a very lovely spot on the north side of Calton Hill. The bright sunshine was a bit of a rarity...

I wish I could have made a contrast as stark as the one in the photo! But I was fearful of botching the picture. I should have been more bold; but then again I know I don't control the medium very well, and I would have botched it. :}

Apologies - watercolour

"What timeless hours must it take,   writing my apologies,   on these burning rocks,   grazed by the dust and the wind and   shaked by the storms and   in ambiguous dismay or delight at a clear bright sky,   my eyes hurt."

Quick illustration of a story-in-the-works. This one is not mine, but it also belongs to the Sunraze world.

Sunraze (watercolour)

Another take on the original Sunraze scene, this time in watercolours.

The result could be better (I suppose it will be a while before I get the hang of watercolours, barring any 'happy accidents'). The paper was not made to take as much water as I loaded it with, glazing after glazing. I will need to to improve my blending, too.

The tree figure was done a bit haphazardly: started with sepia first, then the reds, then I inked it a bit, and again sepia/red. I'm too used to adding the highlights on top, so I got confused. :}

Well, on to the next piece!

Watercolours

I have been struggling with an art block lately. I have little motivation to sit in front of the PC and paint. I do try to force myself into doing so, but that kind of defeats the object. Pencil drawing holds little appeal, too (I used to do most of it during transit, but now I tend to read instead).

Last Friday, however, I got hold of a decent set of watercolours, and I've been genuinely itching to try my hand at using them. I think that might deal with the block!

I am still very clumsy, and I need better brushes, but I'm liking them very much.

The fluffheap tree is from a rougher pencil drawing I made this summer. I used tracing paper to transfer it on my watercolour pad (by tracing it on both sides of the paper and using one side like carbon paper). The necessary cleaning up was done on the fly. Inking was done with very diluted India ink (and a pen with an annoyingly scratchy nib).

 The landscape is a variation of a somewhat failed oil painting I started and abandoned about a month ago. Since then I got some insight on what went wrong with it, though, so maybe I should pick it up again, or redo it from scratch. Problem with oils: long drying times and the fact that turpentine, which would speed them up, disagrees very badly with me. I also feel that using a hair dryer is not exactly the next best approach. I should probably get some Liquin.

Lastly, this is the unfinished digital study (referenced from this photo) I apparently don't want to paint. I tell myself it's useful, learning to paint forests, but I don't seem to believe me. Why, self?!

Look up

From mid September, a very quick pencil/watercolour sketch. Fixed a portion of the sky in PS, though!