So I've really been itchin' to try my hand at some more detail oriented, art nouveau-y stuff. Problem is, after looking for references and inspiration, jumping headfirst into my desired project would most likely end in a mess of watercolor and tears. So I figured I'd have to take baby steps. My main references for this was Mucha (of course!!) and of all things, xxxHolic from Clamp. Both are beautiful, detail heavy, and compositionally gorgeous. All things I want to do, all things I feel I need lots of improving on.
The penciling didn't take too long (I had plotted the rough out on a smaller scale in my sketchbook, so I at least had a gameplan to go off of) The inking was a bit tedious though. I completely FUBARed the hair and was really upset about that. Luckily for me, the watercolor strangely masked alot of the inks I had laid down, so it was like cntrl-z-ing a painting, which never happens, lol! There was also the task of inking in all those lines in the BG; there was too much open space to leave there. My eyes gave out quite often and had to take lots of breaks because they were SO hard to focus on! But they came out looking pretty neat in the end.
The watercolors were interesting this time around; I used them on some aquarelle arches paper. Never used the paper before; it was always so expensive (how can I possible justify spending 40 dollars on a pad of paper??) but I found it on sale for half off a few weeks ago, so it was like "ok it's now or never" lol. I was pretty scared when I got it out because wasn't sure how anything was going to behave. I took some getting used to, but I think I'm going to really like that paper. It's smooth and barely buckled at all; the water beaded up on the surface initially and that scared me, but once it settled in the fibers everything was beautifully smooth and rich.
This project required alot of patience on my part, but I'm glad I stuck with it; it doesn't look as bad as I thought it was going to be. Now I gotta figure out something really cool to do for next time!! Well, within reason of course; I can totally see myself trying to run before I can crawl. Baby steps Miriam, baby steps! LMAO!
Genki
