Little Dove

I don't understand why people don't like Sansa Stark.
If you think about it, she's in a terrible situation; most of her family is dead - and at the hands of the people she's surrounded by - and she's being tortured mentally and physically on a daily basis. Yes she might be a little naive and she was a bit stupid during the first season but she was only a little girl. She still is a little girl, really.

Tools Used
Watercolour pencil and paint to produce this. I wanted to initially use the no-line technique but couldn't help myself but reach for the ballpoint pen.

Artist © LizJOwen
Character © George R.R. Martin

Step by Step

1. The sketch on "normal" paper. 

2. Transferring of the sketch onto watercolour paper using the window as a backlight. Should really get my hands on a light box...

3. "Painting" the face using watercolour pencils. 

4. Painting the doves with watercolour paint, making a lot of mess in the process. 

That's all for now!

Lizzie.

Recent Paintings

Completely didn't realise that I hadn't put these up on this blog, so here is a collection of my most recent paintings, from oldest to newest.

Click here to see my process on Tumblr

This was an Art Trade with my friend Annie who asked me to draw "something with antlers" and she liked the whole fantasy idea, so I decided to do something that represented the woods.

My all-time favourite series is Sherlock, and after doing a 10 minute sketch (as shown below) I wanted to take it further and practise using watercolours. I haven't really painted without relying on lines before so it was something completely new to me!

This was the sketch I did of Sherlock whilst on a holiday in Germany, where I didn't have anything else but pen and paper. 

Under the Blossom Tree II

Been up since 5.30am thinking about this piece when I thought, "What the heck, I might as well finish it!"

Et voila, here is the final piece.

This was more of an exercise to see how much I've improved in terms of drawing and painting, as I decided to redo an old favourite of mine which you can see on my deviantART page here.

Here's both versions placed side by side so that we could see the improvement:

It's crazy how much my style has changed! I've moved away even more from the anime/manga style (in 2010 I was beginning to move away from it) and I have improved in my anatomy. I think my choice of colours for the skin is more realistic as well.

Here's a WIP:

Guess that's all for today! Thanks for reading.

One Day Project with Carlos Garde-Martin

An artist known as Carlos Garde-Martin visited our uni on Friday to "teach" us new methods to allow ourselves to broaden our minds a bit. Our new project brief was to create something out of unusual materials, so we brought all kinds of stuff with us like string, ribbon, paint... It was really fun!

I worked on the "marking" and "collage" tables, and boy I had a good time. It was really nice to just sit down and splatter paint across the page without thinking of the outcome, but simply because I wanted to.

Tried out using PVA glue to form the words until I realised it was going to dry clear... Whoops.

Messing around!

I wasn't as keen on the collage as I don't think it's my strongest point, but I still had fun just cutting up random pieces and placing them all together onto the page.

"Where Oceans Bleed Into The Sky"

"...Far from the world of you and I,

Where oceans bleed into the sky..." - Linkin Park, Catalyst

While I was doing some uni work I played my Linkin Park CD as it had been ages since I had listened to them. In the middle of doing some research I heard the song "Catalyst" and immediately thought up of waves reaching up and leaking into the sun. So I moved everything out of the way and got painting!

The painting was a bit messy as I used a lot of water to get the paint to drip down the page. Didn't really expect some of it to actually go around the sun but it looks pretty cool.

Although this painting doesn't necessarily link in with the album cover's name, I wanted to experiment with watercolour on how to achieve abstract imagery. I could possibly use this technique in my final design if I choose to, because now I know how it "works". The watercolour bleed reminds me of the cracks in shattered glass or veins for some reason.
If I go down the "tree" route, then I could possibly use this technique to paint thin tendrils for the branches.