If you've been following you know that I mined a lot of inspiration of late from the work of turn of the century French artist Alphons Mucha. I tried to emulate is the way he used negative space and outline as well as some of the mystical quality of them. Perhaps I veered away from my goal but there are a host of outline drawings and concepts that reflect his work. The above is what evolved.
Disclaimer: Mucha's work was printed on a lithograph machine, which I couldn't get on loan from the museum (although screen printing creates a similar effect). In addition, Mucha painted live models very realistically; I was looking for a more pop art (graphic) style.
As previously mentioned, I had little confidence in my ability to work with watercolors.
Painting with watercolor almost forces you into submission in order to create a form that is recognizable. I learned a lot that will help me in the future. One being that you can't paint over a pencil sketch with watercolor, but rather set the lines with your brush and then the paint conforms to it once you return with more paint; or else you can see the pencil image through the paint and it looks terrible. at this creates however, are vivid lines that outline the form which can be manipulated with multiple colors (stay with me here). I also learned that it is more about what you don't paint then what you do paint. The negative space is half the image.
Techniques such as adding water, taking away water and waiting for the paint to dry (which is quick, but not as quick as acrylic) and then laying more paint or water lines on the page can create some cool effects.
The painting of the naked girl (niiice) is the only actually painting that went into these. I scanned it in to my computer and reflected it for the Dead poster (I decided to call it "Scarlet>Fire"). The others are computer illustrations negated from a blob of watercolor; the process that I mentioned in my last post which I'm now certain is the technique used for the Print Magazine cover.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
-J
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