Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The end of Watercolor Wednesday

Watercolor Wednesday:
Last week I released the digital collection of my year long experiment of producing and selling small whimsical watercolor paintings (You can purchase the PDF here for just $5!: http://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/watercolor-wednesday-digital-collection) But to add to that collection, last Wednesday I released 19 new paintings. That burst if the foreseeable end of Watercolor Wednesdays (though in a few years I may come back to it) So I wanted to share all those new pieces here with you this week.

Dikensian fish:
Animals in hats. It's a fun subject to paint...but this time instead of fur or feather beasts...I went with fish. And for their choices in hats and props, I leaned them towards the personalities of Holmes, Watson, and some other chap they might investigate. These were painted while I was doing a school visit in Hawaii.
Trout Sleuth: 7" x 3.25"

Chinook Gambler: 7.5" x 3.5"

Bass Roustabout 7" x 3.25"


Decorative Curios:
Giving interest to the mundane can be done just by dedicating a focus to the thing. For the 2012-2013 Watercolor Wednesdays I painted a lot of objects like scissors, a phone, a spigot, etc. These two pieces would fit into that category. Originally I was going to do a set of silverware, but opted to just do the fork. I toyed with the background color, originally it was a rusty red-brown, but I thought it was too much, so I toned it down with a lot of Payne's Grey. The soldier was just fun. I may have thought I'd do more antique kids toys...but I didn't. As a fun side note, we were still potty & puppy training Bronwyn when I painted these, and she managed to knock them (and a few others) off the table with her long curled tail as she walked by the table. She then chewed a bit on the solider, & teethmarks are still visible. 



Decorative Fork: 3.5" x 6"

 Toy Soldier: 3.5" x 6"
Folklore:
I'm bunching these two pieces together because I think of them as "realistic Fairy-folk" instead of the more caricature-ish pieces I'll show nest. I enjoy painting greenmen, and I saw a lot of variations of them carved into furniture and cast into objects when I worked at Materials Unlimited. These two paintings were done on an RV trip in Maine in late 2013.  

Halfling Lanternkeeper: 7" x 3.5"

Greenman: 3.5" x 7"




Characters:
These two pieces were all about playing with shapes to give me more freedom to make interesting charaters instead of pushing for realism. when drawing & painting Uncle Jartholomew Q. Dud, I had in mind the idea of a cast of characters from a board game like "Clue" or "Kill Doctor Lucky", however, I never did more than Uncle Dud. The Banker I think was subtley influenced by one of the portraits for the Ticket to Ride game app.

Uncle Jartholomew Q. Dud: 3.5" x 5"

Fey Banker: 4.5" x 7"

Nebulas:
These were an experiment from when I was getting ready to start selling my AP copies of my Brave poster from Mondo. Because I didn't want to do a drawing on the poster and blemish the printing, I opted to do little watercolor studies. I thought I'd try for a few of the wisps that lead Merida. These fell short of what I wanted for that project, but I added a lot of white gel pen to make them look more space-y
4 Nebulas: 4" x 4" each

Royal Fowl:
Animals in hats again. Painted while in Hawaii on that school visit,. The house we stayed in had wild quail running around in the yard. Then to not repeat the hat types I'd already done in past watercolors (top hats, bowlers, beanies, caps, deer stalkers, etc...) I gave him a crown and decided to fill out the royal court with other game birds.

Pheasant King: 5" x 4"


Quail Prince: 4" x 5"


Turkey Queen: 4" x 8"


Keys:
Back to objects again...and keys again. In the first batch of Watercolor Wednesday paintings, I'd done 3 other keys: Faith, Hope, & Charity. This time (hoping I wasn't treading on Locke & Key territory too much) I went with Happiness, Peace, & Love. 

Happiness Key: 3.5" x 6"

Peace Key: 3.5" x 6"

Love Key: 3.5" x 6"



You can purchase a digital collection of the Watercolor Wednesday project in my online store. $5 gets you a DRM-free 90 page digital book of the year long project of whimsical paintings:





2014 Appearances:
NY Comic Con: Oct. 9-12
Lucca Comics & Games (Italy): Oct. 31-Nov. 2

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