Gossamer Dreams | Posted: Nov. 11, 2016, 1:37 a.m.

Media: Faber Castell pen, masking fluid, and watercolors on watercolor paper

Time: ~3 hours

This piece shares a similar artistic process to my piece "Goddess." I worked the background of the piece first with watercolor. Unlike the "Goddess" piece, however, I worked with masking fluid to layer the piece using watercolor. In my high school art class, I learned that artists created crisp edges with watercolor by using masking fluid. The masking fluid would prevent later watercolor application from blending into an earlier layer.

I failed at completely removing the masking fluid once the watercolors dried, but I kind of just went with the textured effect it produced.

When I was done with watercolors, I stepped back from the piece and realized the design looked a bit like the yin-yang symbol, specifically this variant:

https://image.freepik.com/free-icon/yin-yang-symbol-variant_318-50138.jpg


I immediately thought of the last few episodes from Book One of Avatar: The Last Avatar, which featured black and white koi that represented yin and yang. When I penciled in the koi, however, the fish that would represent yin (on the right side of the drawing) looked too distant from the other fish. I didn't like the composition at that point and decided to erase the "yin" fish.

I then thought of what else I could add to the piece in order for it to be complete. I browsed through some of the print-outs that my art teacher had handed us. I came across this Gabriel Moreno piece (minus the car):

http://gabrielmoreno.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/1.jpg


The hair in his piece was beautiful and reminded me of a mixture of smoke and coral. Although the piece inspired me to draw coral, I realized that my piece featured "flowy," dreamlike elements, and the coral would seem out of place with its rigidity. That was when I thought of seaweed. I started drawing the seaweed without any references and occasionally glanced at Moreno's work to get a sense of how he drew overlapping lines.