How She Paint

Hello from Painty Friday! I'm waiting for the pizza (ahem! Friday) to warm up... just enough time to share my afternoon of painting with you! A lot of my shop is made up of pen and ink drawings, and on the blog I've been putting in some pencil sketches (weather permitting) but this is all about the sweet, sweet watercolor.

So I began at around noon with this painting that had been stretched & ready to go for... oh, I'm gonna say since about early December. This is my biggest Plexiglas (the plastic board I paint on) so today was the day to whirlwind finish to make room for the next painting!

The beginning is just a whole mess, really, laying down big swatches of color. The blue was already done when I came back to these girls, and I wanted a muted tone, so I sped pretty fast through my lights and darks.

These girls are in the circus, the idea was to get a handful of zodiac signs as circus performers. Maybe as an excuse to paint circus performers. Or stripes. And, I'm a Gemini. :) It was disorienting at first getting used to the roughness of this paper after so much pen and Gocco.

By then it was around 2 and time to go to the gym (ahem, pizza) which was mighty fine after two hours of squinting and using my teeniest brush. With the painting done it is time to spend just as much time inking. This is my favorite part (years of reading comic books)... I went through a whole MicronPigma in this small painting and it took another 2 hours! But, then, I often go back in with paint for a wee bit more detail, too.

Just about 5 hours later and the sun is setting, so my final photograph is sort of blurry. But there it is!
I'm really happy with the result, a good segue to Printy Saturday (the Moleskines came in the mail! Shazam!) ...and the pizza was delicious!