My latest painting is a tribute to anxiety that is a 'nervous friend' of many creative people, a friend no one chooses. There is a constant battle between the cold logical side of the brain and a few irritating thoughts pacing around it like a bunch of slippery red fishes, making it hard to see things for what they are and simply relax.
Here are some progress shots, starting from a freehand pencil sketch (that's right, no planning and straight to paper) and adding watercolor outlines, then starting to fill those shapes little by little,
adding shadows and colour as I went along.
I have initially decided that thoughts aka fishes would be bright red, and the rest was calculated based on that colour choice. The paper was difficult as it wasn't designed for watercolor and I picked it up during sale at an art materials shop, what I loved about it was the slightly greenish-grey background colour and I was ready to accept that using watercolor on it might be difficult (and it was, as the paper wasn't absorbing water and drying out properly). But it turns out you can adopt to anything, really.
A 'full-bod' scan of the piece is below. Oof that 600 DPI TIFF wasn't light or cheap to produce,
but it's really worth it when it comes to potential print making.
but it's really worth it when it comes to potential print making.
