Sunday Sessions - "Observant" - Painting Process

• Observant •

I've decided that I want to keep to a little series called Sunday Sessions which includes completing a full art piece and documenting the process, and as you may have guessed it, on Sundays. It is my guaranteed day off every week and gives me a lot of time to work on projects like this.

In all honestly though lately I have been feeling absolutely exhausted. It's pretty unusual for me to struggle to rise in the morning and to nap throughout the day but it has been a bit of a theme. I took a few days off Steemit because I was worried I was overloading myself and creating too much pressure to be active and I found that I was really losing motivation to complete the things I'm passionate about. I know how important it is take a step back when you are feeling overwhelmed and instead I just let myself participate in things that really don't require much from me like binge watching episodes and going out for a walk or a people watching session along the esplanade.

Although my energy was low this morning I decided to persevere through and I'm glad I did because I'm pretty happy with what I was able to create. My inspiration was sparked and my piece found fluidity through the comforting sounds of this Joe Rogan podcast. It focus's heavily on the theme of meditation and I found it really enjoyable to listen to whilst painting.

• Initial Sketch •

I'm trying to get more comfortable working on pieces that are on a larger scale. I decided that this piece would work well on A3.

• Skin Tone •

Keeping to the theme of working with things outside my comfort zone, I wanted to experiment with different colours for skin tone. I have a tendency to stick to what I know and really perfect particular things but after a while I tend to get bored with repetition. Going into this piece I knew there was going to be a lot of experimentation. I settled on pink and yellow and like how the colours compliment each other.

• Background •

I have really enjoyed creating background textures by using a straw to blow the paint in different directions. Here I also used a water dropper to create more controlled spots.

• Hands •

Hands are one of my favourite things to draw yet I still find incredibly hard to perfect. I'm really happy with the way the hands came out and once again getting a bit more comfortable with shading and contrast.

• Hair •

When I think about creating hair I feel like I can break the pieces down in my mind but when it comes to putting pen to paper I get a little confused on the fluidity of how the hair moves and shapes. There are a few things here that I would've changed but I am slowing starting to understand how it works. I couldn't decided what colour to settle on for the hood and decided on green thinking it would contrast okay because of the background.

• Face •

The way the face is designed was inspired by a portrait of Alex Grey. He drew these emanating rings that create this really psychedelic feel to his face. I tried to recreate the same effect with pencil which I felt originally worked, but when I went to paint over the lines I just didn't have a fine enough brush to get lines that I was satisfied with. I questioned if I should've used black fine liner instead. Before I finalised the piece I used an eraser to remove any pencil markings which ended up lightening the face and lines to which I preferred.

• Details •

Originally I hadn't planned to outline any of this piece because a lot of the watercolour artists' I draw inspiration from have the ability to bring their pieces together without doing this. But without the lining I felt like everything lacked a little dimension. I guess this is something to work on in the future although its not necessarily something I want to remove from my style altogether. I added my signature dots to the hair and some gold trim to the hood just for some pop.

I'm pretty damn pooped right now but regardless feeling super happy that I was able to complete this. I'd love to hear your thoughts so please feel free to leave any comments or feedback.

Big love to you!
Sarah. 🍄