I had no idea what I was doing when I was painting these tree swing pieces. I was using both new techniques and new mediums, which was probably ill-advised. On the one hand, I’ve now several techniques under my belt which I will definitely use again. On the other hand, I kinda wanted to die when I was rendering delicate branches in pastel pencil.

Time-lapse of Darkling Deep November

Time-lapse of In Elegant Decline

Time-lapse of Clove and Cardamon Tangle

Even Mike was looking forward to when I was working in acrylic again, thanks to the almighty racket my electric sharpener would make every 5 mins or so, in my desperate quest for a fine point. I still couldn’t get the kind of detail I was after in the leaves with pastel; not for lack trying mind. So I ended up painting the leaves in a combination of acrylic and ink. I really liked this look and also painted the border of “In Elegant Decline” this way. I wrote up a tutorial, detailing the technique, although I used acrylic gouache that time.

Next week, I’ll be sharing the process I went through to select the colour schemes for each tree swing painting — pretty much my favourite thing in the whole wide world.

Katherine