My Art Turned Into Cross Stitch

Paine Free Crafts are converting a selection of my artwork in cross stitch charts and kits! The first image, 'Autumn Scribe' is up for sale. Click here to visit painefreecrafts.com.

Those owls are being stitched up good and proper!

Spectrum 20

A list of successful entrants into Spectrum 20 has been revealed. I'm incredibly pleased to announce that this year my watercolour 'Autumn Scribe' will be one of the hundreds of images in the pages of the annual.

For those new to Spectrum visit the website. If you're a fan of fantastic art (Fantasy, Science-Fiction, Historical, Surrealism) then the annuals are a must for your bookshelf.

Autumn Scribe Part. 2

Below you can see more progress photos of 'Autumn Scribe'. As I gradually worked up the local colours I began to give everything more form by working out the light sources and cast shadows.

The lighting is surprisingly complicated in this painting. There is a cool natural back-light, warm candlelight that creates interesting shadows that is not very far reaching and a weak warm light source on the front so that you can see the details in the main character. The last light source probably wouldn't exist in real life but this is fantasy... so there!  

 

Autumn Scribe 

31 x 23cm 

Above is the final painting finished in watercolour with slight highlights in gouache. Below you can see the items that are meaningful to Suzanne I mentioned in my previous post. It was a lot of fun putting these in and it all adds to the narrative of the image.

Autumn Scribe Part.1

As part of my wedding present to Suzanne I wanted to paint her a watercolour based on a similar theme to 'Jacques' Rest'. It didn't take long for me to come up with the main character so I began to work on some thumbnail sketches, I was hoping to post those too but I have mislaid them. In the end I did about six and then developed my favourite, adding another Owl in the background. 

Now that I had a rough composition I could stretch some watercolour paper and draw up a detailed version. I worked with a HB pencil as I knew the painting would be dark covering up pencil marks.

As I drew away the thought came to me to add objects to the setting that are meaningful to Suzanne so I secretly 'borrowed' a few things from around the house to copy them into the final drawing. All the time I was keeping the painting a secret, making sure I covered it with paper at the end of the day and not answering questions regarding the missing items.

The two photos above show the gradual painting process. When I do something as complex as this I tend to outline most things in sepia watercolour before adding local colour and washes. This helps to maintain the detail and add character to edges, such as the frayed corners of old books and gnarled tree bark. 

In my next post I'll show you the completed artwork and details of the 'secret objects'.