We have all seen those infinite animations that keep you falling through the vortex of endless repetition of patterns. That is also known as the Droste effect, and recently I have decided to experiment by combining droste and watercolor to see if we can loop some of that paint for our pleasure. 

Worth mentioning that I thought looping a single illustration would be boring so I decided to create two compositions that would twirl into each other, making it look like two parallel universes intertwine and mix warm pinks and cold greens together into a nice watercolor cocktail.

First of all, I designed my future paintings (in PS) - my main goal was keeping the centres and the main character as similar as possible in order for the illusion to work. The surroundings would change but not massively, some resemblance would have to remain. 

I used a lightbox to trace the digital sketch onto watercolor paper.

After the outlines were sketched out on paper, my painting process could begin.
You can watch some speedy painting timelapse in the following process vid, or continue scrolling for pics.

I am really not great with animation, but I did what I could! The gif isn't seamless but it sort of works :) 

Prints for both watercolors are available on Society6.
Follow me on Insta for more watercolor illustrations.