Rainbow Art Journal – Falling

This illustration actually started off as a depiction of someone being sucked up in a beam of light. Think UFOs and alien abduction. As the drawing progressed, however, I decided that the figure was actually doing the opposite and was falling. The negative space was, therefore, a tunnel or pit rather than a beam of propulsive light. This was another “short on time” day which necessitated me painting only a single layer of watercolour. As such, the black “tunnel” edges of the composition are very patchy. They would certainly benefit from additional layers of pigment to make the black richer and more dense. As much as that uneven, mottled quality bothers me, I am trying to convince myself that the scrubbiness works to suggest some kind of rough textured surface, such as packed dirt. That’s me attempting to hush my Inner Critic. It has not photographed well but the spatter – used to suggest disturbed debris – is two shades of gold watercolour.

Rainbow Art Journal – Icarus

One of my sons is obsessed with Greek Mythology – all of my kids were at one point – and that means that, thanks to osmosis, I have become a bit of a Greeky Mythology nerd myself.  The mythological figures, especially the monsters, therefore often appear in my sketchbooks.  A few years ago now, that theme was even the basis for a challenge I did to draw 40 drawings in 40 days.  I have contemplated returning to that theme for a whole series of drawings – but without the time challenge – but that shall be for some future juncture.  For now, I decided to draw Icarus in my Rainbow Art Journal.

I am currently working through the yellow section of my art journal and bold yellow suggested sunshine and sunshine suggested Icarus’ wings melting … This was my thought process.  This was another page that had some little underlying texture as I had previously scraped leftover white acrylic over the page.  You can spot the lumps and bumps.  I kept the illustration simple and, therefore, kept the colour palette limited.  I generally suck at drawing wings but I actually really like the way these turned out given that they are supposed to be a) manmade and b) broken.  I tried using spray inks to create some visual texture between the sun disc and the falling figure but it seems that the inks don’t perform well on top of acrylic – hello, learning opportunity – but it adds a sort of glow around the sun so at least it did not ruin the illustration.