February - Week 1

Written 16/02/2025, Updated 17/02/2025

Sketches based on her work

Like last month, I did some felt tip pen sketches of some of her work. So that I could try to get the form of her compositions rather than focusing too much on the details

Sketch of 'Fragile' by Qinni — The girl feels very liquid-y

Sketch of a girl in a teacup — This was hard to do when I couldn't rub anything out...

Sketch of girl with hole in her chest, blood is flowing through the hole — It was really interesting to see her utilise cross hatching (something I learned about in art class but feel like I don't notice much)

Sketch of 'Starred Freckles' and a sketch of an ill girl drawing stars — Yeah... it's hard to do a galaxy with a single felt tip pen XD. I like the composition of the girl in the hospital but again there were a lot of details

Sketch of a girl with stars and galaxies ripping out of her chest — I feel like I was able to convey her pain as her chest seems like it's being ripped open

Sketch of a girl holding a cup of tea — I think in this one I was able to convey the softness ubiquitous with her work (the pink pen probably helped)

Here is the whole page!

Entire page composed of all the above images

As you can see from my notes, a lot of Qinni's work is serene and in quite a few of them (especially her later ones) she utilises the colour of the background rather than filling it all in (but she doesn't 'strictly' stay within lines either). While I didn't copy the painting part, I did notice more of how her works were done by copying them

Other things I noticed are

Her characters often have large oversized tears
They often have vulnerable expressions
She used soft colours, for example the pupils in her eyes are often a darker hue of the iris rather than being black
Bodies of water/liquid are often used in her work
Her colour palettes are sometimes more limited though always vibrant
She also often uses flowers/plants to surround her central figures or to represent their bodies in some way

Specific artwork I will be focusing on

Birdcage, 2019

Why this one?

I love the composition of it, I'm not sure how to explain but I like the subject's expression - her weariness and sadness. I love the layers of the bird caged in her ribcage, but then there are the plants growing out of the cage (unruly, overgrown or trying to escape?) And then she is pulling a thing vine, is she clearing her cage, or unthreading it as it breaks? There are so many ways to interpet it!

And that's not to mention the actual skilled artistic ability on display, the colours look absolutely phenomonenal. They are subtle but not too washed out, and the shading is so clean. You can almost feel a glow from it even though this was done on paper, not digitally (I don't why that impresses me so much but it does)

Sketches based on specific artwork

This month, I decided to do a pencil drawing based on Birdcage to get a idea on the shape (like last month) but then instead of doing another in pen I would do a quick painting based on it so I could get a better idea on the painting process that Qinni would have done for it (obviously mine is much flatter than Qinni's, which I will attribute partly to less skill but also to less time - it took about an hour or so overall?)

A pencil drawing and a watercolour/gouache painting done by me based on Birdcage — As you can see from my notes, watercolour was likely used for the intiial layers and gouache was added for detail and more vibrancy. Also her pose is strong, contrasting her vulnerable looking facial expression