A spiritual and emotional artwork about happiness, joy, inspiration and the feeling of harmony with the whole world. It is very significant for me.
This artwork is a personification of beauty and strength of an individual who dares to change the whole life by changing the mentality, refusing to keep all the resentments, negative constraints, stereotypes, old models of useless behavior.
This is the way of personal growth, an everyday discovery of freedom and unbounded creativity, emotional experience of the unity with the world.
The process of this art’s creation was also an interesting experiment to train my artistic skills. In the past I usually used something particular — it could be a thin nib (and black liquid ink) or ink liner.
But my goal for this artwork was to achieve a lively look, spontaneous, even romantic impression, and preserve all the tiny details. That’s why I used both nib and liners. With a thin nib I can easily create a varying line, and with a liner — accurate and uniform hatching.
I also could use a brush liner instead of a nib (for example, BS and BM variants), but these brush liners have less possibilities and are more difficult in control than the good old thin nib.
The size of this artwork is bigger than the average size of my previous pieces, it’s similar to A2 elongated format (and quite difficult to scan with my small scanner :D). I really liked to work with this size of paper, it gives the possibility to spread and expand the creativity.
The first step was a pencil sketch, the base for the inking part.
Then I proceed to the nib and black liquid ink part.
It seems that I’ve only outlined the contours and the darkest areas of my drawing, but it’s a fundamental step of the process. Here I’ve created a fresh vivid impression of the drawing.
The ink liners part is the final step.
I used 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2 liners. Very thin lines, so they are harmonious and well-balanced with the previous nib lines (that are thick and expressive). The liners’ hatches are ideal for working on the details because of theirs uniform, slightly technical look on paper and the predictability of behavior.
I really enjoyed using my drawing supplies in such a combination! Here you can see the fragments of the scanned art:
This artwork was one of my favorites for a long time, and one day I decided to add color to it. I do this not so often because black and white ink art is so valuable in its elegance. But sometimes coloring makes the artworks even more appealing.
I worked on this artwork chunk by chunk. It felt more convenient. In the course of many months, I added color nuances at one moment and forgot about this art piece at another.
But the other day I remembered about this unfinished task and felt that now it’s time to put a full stop. And here it is, completed! Almost a year has passed since I’ve created the original black and white version!
I really like how it looks with this blue textured background. And my skills of a former make up artist came in handy! The colors make this artwork look more distinctive and help to communicate the emotions.
Mixed media technique is quite something!
Both versions of the artwork in comparison:
