I hope you all had a good Christmas despite the limitations amid Covid! Today I’d like to share a sweet little painting I made a few weeks ago whilst following the next lesson of Tracy Verdugo’s Story Painting Class (Chapter 2, Lesson 4). In a previous blog. I wrote about creating thumbnails to brainstorm your ideas on sketchbook. This painting was made using one of the thumbnails and creating something special with it!
From Thumbnails to Paper
In my blog about Thumbnails, I outlined my inspirations. It is a sweet story about me as a little girl crawling over the flower bed at a park and reaching out! I must have been two or three. Although I don’t remember it at all of course, I do have photographs of this kawaii moment. I’m with my neighbor friend just curious as to what could be these pretty things laying in the flower bed. And our mothers are happily overlooking and thinking how cute and adorable we are. Precious memories! And now I transferred one of my ideas here on a large A3 paper (Canson’s Mixed Media) using aquarelle pencil. It’s just me and Mama and a random cat!
Painting in Layers
Gouache was the main medium used for this painting. And I love the look of it! The strong opaque appearance especially with the vivid colours. It was already looking promising from the first layer whilst just working on the background! I used Holbein’s Acryla Gouache as it comes in a vast range of beautiful colors. For this painting, Tracy suggests creating color blocks of different shades first then working in layers to add details. Gouache works a bit like acrylic ink in that you can indeed layer on top of each other without moving the paint below.
So painting began and progressed as illustrated below. Just adding and doodling as I went along, remembering contrasts in shapes and colours. I had so much fun just painting away that I couldn’t stop! In the end it took me at least three days to tell myself it’s time to add some details.
Finalizing It
In the end, I drew in the eyes with Ecoline markers for a lightly-touched look (Molotow acrylic markers would be too harsh). White gel pens were used to doodle in some finer details scattered about. And let’s not forget a bit of glitter glue applied here and there like on some flowers and my jumpsuit. Finally I dotted in some Nuvo Drops to create some pearls for my mother’s necklace. And now… some sweet memories of my mama and me illustrated here at last!
One of the reasons I enjoyed doing this painting was that I got to experiment with gouache, a medium I’ve hardly used before. It’s more versatile than I had imagined, and wow the vivid colors! Something I need to use more often. More importantly, I am very pleased I had the chance to document this happy moment with my mother and create such a beautifully cheerful painting. I now get emotional when I see this!
My Kawaii Quarter 