Valkyrie in Training

It's amazing how one doodle can be a catalyst for other ideas. This idea was based on my original Thumbelina doodle. For some reason, I kept going back to it and wanted to further explore other possibilities. At one point, she was riding a sea creature and, now that I'm taking Terryl Whitlatch's course on Creature Design, who knows what I'll come up with. :) 

In the end, I thought having the girl gleefully riding a pegasus while he tries his best not to drop her might be a more fun and comical piece; hopefully, my intent comes across. 

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Thumbelina

In my continuing quest to get back to traditional media, I decided to do this piece in watercolours with a touch of acrylics and Prismacolour pencil crayons to refine some areas. The idea was born while brainstorming a comic book cover but something about the girl stuck with me and so I put it away until I had more time to work on it. I ended up scanning it and bringing it into Photoshop to play with various concepts before printing it out and transferring it to watercolour paper. Instead of Fabriano paper, I used Arches 140-lb cold-pressed paper which has a slightly different texture than the Fabriano but still lovely to work on. I finished up with a couple of coats of Krylon archival matte fixative. 

I am continuing to try and apply what I've learned from Nathan Fowkes class on Composition to each piece. For now, I will be going into less detail about my classwork to focus more on producing art and blogging about it. I hope you keep reading because I still plan to keep sharing!

The original piece is now available on my Etsy Store and prints are available at my Society6 store.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize