Sonnenzeit, step-by-step

This fantasy-ish painting was my contribution to an artbook about "time". Concept was that one day was divided into 48 parts (each representing a time, in half-hour steps) and an artist would create a picture for that particular time. I took this as an excuse to make something with a sundial and specifically requested to get a time-slot around noon! As you can see, I ended up with "half past one, PM".

Technique of my painting is - hard to believe, I know - watercolor, in several layers, which I'm going to show here as a little step-by-step thingy.

I started with this pencil sketch. It actually kind of created itself more or less randomly; I included different types of clocks (the "classical" being the requirement of the artbook) and a sunflower because it went with my overall "sun" thing.

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...yeah, that's about the usual way I work.

Begonia spiral

I absolutely love begonias. Not just because they're really pretty flowers (though they are) but more specifically, because of their leaves. They're about the only plants to have spiral leaves! Okay, so I'm obsessing a bit. (And I know people usually don't evaluate flowers by their mathematical properties.) But anyway, I like begonias, and I like painting begonias.

Watercolor step-by-step / tutorial thing

This step-by-step tutorial is just supposed to show MY way of doing things. Other artists do it differently and also get wonderful results. But if you're new to watercolor, maybe you'll find this kind of useful.

Since this is a tutorial, I grant you explicit permission to copy (and upload wherever, although credit for the original would be nice in that case) the image for practice purposes. Just don't make any money with it. ;) By the way, the plant is Chaenomeles japonica.

Okay, so... Here it is.

1. I made a clean pencil sketch on watercolor paper. In this case, because of the small format (ATC) and the detailed picture, I used very smooth (hot pressed) paper. I skipped the part with preliminary sketches for composition and light/dark (on cheap paper, of course - I throw them away afterwards), but I do them before I start a serious painting. I think it's a good habit to do so. On the "real" painting, I only draw the contour-lines of objects with pencil.

2. I start coloring with the yellow layer. I always use the yellow first, because watercolor yellow is VERY delicate and muddies easily when you try to lay it over other colors. Also, this is a first way of determining where the light will go in the picture. Although the yellow is overpainted almost completely in the end, it gives a warm glow to the parts in sunlight. The brightest spots, I leave white.

3. Then, I start defining the shadow areas of the picture. For this, I use the complementary color of the light. (This is a fairly important principle you might have heard of: warm light - cool shadows, and vice versa. I think Leonardo da Vinci was the first guy who wrote it down, haha.) In this case - purple. This is also overpainted almost completely in the end, but changes the characteristics of the upper color layers.

Now - and this is important - I let the paper dry really, really well. (At least a day is necessary.)

4. I roughly put in the characteristic colors of objects. This is simply "the flowers are red, the leaves are green, yadda yadda". Note how the lower layer of yellow and purple makes it already look pretty differentiated!

5. Now it's time for some detail, and also for further darkening of the shadowy parts. I make sure all tonal values from "white" to "almost black" are present in the painting. This is important: too light shadows tend to make a picture look flat. Also, the human eye will be inevitably drawn to the area of highest contrast between light and dark. This is a nice and easy way to define the focal point of a painting. (In this case: note how the light on the lowest petal borders on a dark shadow area? I bet this is where you looked first!) I also pay attention to all the textures, like the veins in the petals.

6. Finally, I add some last details with opaque white. In this case, the brightest reflections of the light, and the veins of the leaves.

Finished! If you have any questions, additions or other remarks, just leave a comment.

Ore minerals and card games

So a few weeks ago I was visiting that conference. (Okay, I visited three conferences during the last few weeks, and at least two of them were too many. And then some meetings. Anyway...) The funniest thing I found there was a card game - Authors - featuring ore minerals. Not just a crystal card game but only ore minerals, which was so weirdly specific I (of course) had to buy that thing. Still, I'd like to know, who came up with that particular idea? (And did it sell well?)

By the way, this painting shows Goethite, also an ore mineral. As a reference, I used a piece from my institute's collection. No, I don't work with ore minerals (I'm more the carbonate kind of person LOL), but isn't it nice to know our scientific resources are used so well?

Yora playing chess

Here, I was not only painting, but also playing with some craft materials! My friend Anke sent me those lovely die-cuts in the shape of chessmen (she knows my taste almost TOO well; I suspect she got these things more for my sake than for her own) and obviously, I had to start making something with them immediately (or as immediately as possible, anyway, with actual work distracting me). Even more obviously, the picture had to be Yora, a character from one of my stories. She's ever the chessmaster and she doesn't even have to distract her boyfriend with one of those outfits to win the game. (Though I have to say - these giant sequins make a nice bra.) I used all kinds of other craft materials (stickers, several origami papers and other craft papers, rhinestones, washi tape, ...) so the overall impression stays somewhat coherent.