Spirited Away: A Slightly Eccentric Tutorial

First off, this isn't exactly a tutorial. It's way too scatterbrained for that, especially since I forgot I was suppose to be taking pictures of each step halfway through.... But I would like to show you my experience of pushing my skills into something very different for me.


I wrote a poem earlier that explains the sort of mood I was in yesterday and am usually in while I try to create these fantastical paintings. My brain wants to draw EVERYTHING and I realistically have to settle on only a few ideas. You can view the poem I wrote -here-


This painting was a challenge piece for me because I wanted to create the whole thing in ONE DAY. I mostly succeeded.

So this is the inked sketch that turned up after my muse and my brain settled down, well, settled down a little...


I kept quite a bit of the pencil lines in so that I could have something a bit more raw than my usual clean, crisp black lines.


The hair I left mainly to make up as I went along, as well as much of the background. I have to challenge myself to use brushstrokes, rather than rely on what I have laid out for myself. I really wanted to get the creativity flowing for this one, and push myself out of comfort.


I planned to make swirls and swooshes in the background, inspired by the ones I've seen in Stephanie Pui-Mun Law's paintings. My only other plan for this piece was to make it Bright! and to use very vibrant colors like sunshine.


I use Arches Hot Press Watercolor Paper, mechanical pencil, and Micron pens, usually the finest point: 0.005.

Next I painted in some background with yellows on top surrounding the figure, and some reds and purples on the bottom.


I use mainly Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors, and also Yarka Watercolors. I'm not sure if one is "allowed" to mix brands, but I always have, so I don't see any reason to stop now. The brushes are an assortment of mostly Princeton rounds.


The yellows were lemon yellow and cadmium yellow from the Yarka set. This is mainly because I was too lazy to get the Daniel Smith yellows out. 


For the bottom reds and purples, I used DS alizarin crimson, my favorite, and DS carbazole violet.


I did the first wash the same way I usually do washes. While I was taking Watercolor Classes, this seemed to be a technique that confused most students. First I wet the entire paper with clear water and a big flat brush, nice and wet! Then I splatter some colors around the page, taking care to pull the color as I go away from the figure or other parts I may not want to be bright yellow or the like. You can use more clear water to pull and lift the colors away from the central figure. This way you create a sort of glow around the figure that is especially nice for fantasy art. You have to work fast of course! Otherwise, you're left with weird splotches that you have to figure out what to do with... Once you're done and waiting for paint to dry, you can use the salt effects or rubbing alcohol for some fun starbursts and bubbles. Otherwise, I use a hair dryer, full intensity at this time. =)

Next, I create some swooshes...


I try and stay with my sun-colored plan, but I need a bit of contrast and variation. Since purple is the complement of yellow, I put that down with a little extra red, to make more of a red-violet and stick with the bright theme.


The technique here is to lay down a brushstroke, and then with clean water lay on down directly beside it so there's no hard edges, but so that the color bleeds over. I did create a couple of hard edges, but those are intended. 


(sorry about the weird inconsistencies with color by the way! This was taken under the light of my art lamp which gives off weird shadows and so all of these pictures have had to be adjusted to show them off best.)

Now it's time for the figure. I can always go back to add more swooshing and background later.


I first put in the red-violet shadows, for warmth, then for contrast I used DS ultramarine blue in the cooler areas of the figure, to really bring it to life.


I added in the bright red ribbon, just because I was feeling gutsy. I painted some soft greenish lines coming from the tips of the fingers of her left hand, and I also did some stokes of yellow around the orb the little sprite is offering. 


The above picture also clearly shows the first wash step where I pulled color away from the fairy, but let it slide over the little sprite, since she is not the main focus. 

Wow, the camera really distorts some of these colors from picture to picture... sorry!!


Anyways, here I started in on her outfit and wings. The dress was still wet when I took this picture, that why it's shiny. 


For the dress, I started with yellows as a base color and then used oranges from my Yarkas and watered down DS cadmium red. I also added some DS ultramarine blue and the same red-violet in the folds.


For the pants, I used a lot of this watered down blueish-green color left over on my pallet that I have no idea what colors formed it... That's partly the joy of watercolors over other mediums: colors you painted with months ago can still be used, just add water! More DS ultramarine was used in the shadows as well. I also poured a lot of watered down yellows over the pants then as it was still wet, then I mopped it up. This was done so that I could go for a bit of a glow and to give them a worn look, rather than leaving them crisp white. This way I could also leave the whites for the brightest parts around the orb, wings, etc. 


For the wings, i spent a lot of time adding small amounts of brush strokes, then pressing a paper towel down so they didn't come off as too harsh. I wanted to create the stained glass dragon-fly winged look that the great Stephanie Law is so good at. 

This next picture is a tad blurry-- I'm sorry! I didn't know at the time! 


Anyways, I painted in some of her hair with yarka yellows and watered down browns. 


For the trailing smoky looking bits flowing from her hands, I first painted these with clear water, then spattered in some greens, reds, oranges, whatever I felt like and let them all intermingle as I literally turned my paper all angles, and voila!: I have some really interesting wet-into-wet effects in a contained part of my painting.


That is about as much as I care to fit into one blog entry. More steps will come later as I did finish the piece in one day (yesterday), but looking at it today, I might want to add in a few more touch-ups before I scan it in.


Stay tuned!!