WIP: Blossoms

and a happy new year to you. i'm going to try and do something that i used to do way back when, showcase a painting in progress from start to end.

to paraphrase a line from last year's movie, prometheus- "big things start from small beginnings." 

i had an idea for an image

i wanted to play with the notion of water as the color of the paper and have a few lines showing the ripples in a pond with some bits of reeds sticking up from it. 

from there i was trying to figure out what the narrative could be. i had an image of a fish tipping his hat to a girl or a princess. so i worked on that for a while.

it was all right, but i'd done some princess-y stuff in the past and wanted a new story.

one day i was reading a comic whose story was set in japan and the idea of cherry blossoms falling on water with a girl in a kimono stuck in my head. so with a quick change and adjustment, i began work on this idea.

i was liking this direction. after transferring the image to paper, i began with painting the fish.

next, the girl.

then filling in the rest of the background. at some point, i abandoned the idea of making the water the paper color because it would mean i should paint in the sky to differentiate the two. i dropped in some blue but made it washy.

then back to the top for the finished image. 

in hindsight, i could have broken down the steps further. maybe by layers of paint in one instance. if i try a post like this again, i'll do better. i've always enjoyed seeing how elements develop whether in paint or model making or movie special effects. (yeah, i like watch the behind the scenes stuff on DVDs) so i thought i'd try my hand at some behind the scenes action. 

Comments

[Joanne Roberts]

Thanks for these break downs. It is really helpful to see those in-between stages. Seeing a half-finished illustrations encourages me not to give up on a painting of my own.

[ken]

thanks for the note.

yes, keep going with your paintings. i know i at times feel this way where i'm in the early stages of a picture and i'm not feeling it (coming together) but keep plugging away and somewhere down the line it comes into better focus and turns out well.

so stick with it. : )

[Rita]

I love the behind-the-scenes posts!! I totally watch the features on my Pixar DVDs over and over because they let you see so much of that.

Thanks for sharing, Ken!! Beautiful!!