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.

Some months back I purchased a set of Dr. Ph. Martin's India Ink because I heard they were nice to work with. This past weekend I felt the urge to try them out.

For my first painting I didn't want to try anything too complicated. I just wanted to get used to working with the medium. I picked a spring theme because I'm tired of the cold weather that feels like it will never leave! I chose peonies as my main subject because they remind me fondly of yearly trips my family and I used to make visiting my grandmother in New Brunswick. She had the most beautiful peony bushes growing in front of her house so when I see peonies they remind me of her and those carefree days. I also chose pretty dragonflies that remind me of spring. I painted my favourite colour combination of oranges, greens and blues. My second week's assignment for Nathan Fowkes's class on composition was to use unity with variety to create a meaningful relationships with the subject and I kept that in mind when creating this piece.

I used a couple of fine nibs, and a size 10, white Taklon brush on 140-lb cold-pressed paper (un-stretched). I found them all delightful to work with. I taped down my page and didn't use a lot water so the paper stayed fairly flat. I finished with three light applications of Krylon matte archival fixative spray.

The original will soon be available to purchase but I've put up prints and products featuring this art on my Society6 shop. For a limited time, there is a free shipping promotion going on. Promotion expires May 8, 2016 at Midnight Pacific Time.

Promo code: https://society6.com/rinarozsas?promo=8QPG4QQM2C8G

Update: The original is now available on my Etsy Shop.

Thumbelina

Watercolour Painting of Peonies and Dragonflies

Chalk Full of Dreams