February - Week 3

Written 25/02/2025, Updated 26/02/2025

Sketching ideas

I will say, I didn't have much of an idea of where to go with this until I looked back at my mind map and remembered what I had written about my Welsh cultural identity - and specifically the loss of the Welsh language.

From that intial thought, I sketched out a basic pose

woman looking sideways

I then drew a more detailed pose usingAdorka Stocksas a reference (a great resource), specificallythis pose

Woman standing gracefully with open arms and her palms out

Woman in long dress standing gracefully, roses engulf her and she looks sad

I thought a good way to symbolise English oppression of her language would be with an English rose overwhelming a Wesh daffodil. I also wanted to have a Welsh dragon losing its tongue to further that point (and to visually allude to the leaf at the bottom of the dress in the original). Finally, to keep the idea of a human anatomy being seen I included the heart (being broken)

I then practised the face so that I could get the best expression of her sadness, then I thought that her mouth should be covered to symbolise the loss of her language. Initially it was simply to be tape, but then I struck on the idea that the roses would cover her mouth! I decided to use a Welsh woman (actress Catherine Zeta Jones) as a face reference

Woman with teary eyes — Initial sad face

Woman with teary eyes and tape over her mouth — Added tape to make repression clearer

Woman with teary eyes and roses over her mouth, notes indicating they are white roses — Added English roses to symbolise origin of oppression

Young Catherin Zeta Jones — I used this picture as she has an interesting hairstyle and her expression matches what I want for the picture

Then I thought I would practise drawing the non-human aspects of the picture, since these will be painting I didn't want to make the flowers overly detailed

Sketch of daffodils — I had practise from last month, so these were pretty easy to do

Sketch of roses — Roses seemed more complex, but I feel like I was able to abstract them a bit

The heart was quite hard to get right, in terms of the level of detail that I should use. I want it to be clearly an actual heart but stylised enough to 'break'

The hardest thing to do was probably the dragon, I was using the Welsh flag as a reference (because it's fucking cool!) I did a more detailed one first and then one where I mapped out the shapes (maybe should have done it first...)

Sketch of dragon — Not too bad, gave me a good idea of what it will look like

After the dragons I went back to the faces, I toyed with different clothes (I thought maybe a traditional Welsh dress but realised it cluttered the drawing)

Sketch of woman in traditional Welsh dress — It looks quite nice here, but considering the surrounding flowers and the fact a traditional Welsh dress is red which whould go against the red Welsh dragon, I didn't stick with this for too long

Then it was time to draw my final plan, this time I drew two out - one for the general lineart and another to get a vague idea of colours

Pencil drawing of young woman with a mouth covered with roses and surrounded by rose thorns and her heart is breaking — I didn't spend too long on all the details as this isn't my FINAL piece

Painting of woman with brown hair and blue dress, very basic looking — Ooooh...

I like how the final idea looks, especially the eyes (I did my best to make them Qinni-esque!) but I think I did the left arm too short and will probably not have any hands showing in my final piece (in her original the right arm is bent which isn't the case in mine). The colour blocking looks a bit cursed (I literally just put the paint down) but it does give me a better idea of what colours I should use and how to mix them (obviously I will layer more than I have here)

How the process is going

I must admit, considering that I had no idea for most of the month I am happy that I now have a solid plan for what I will be doing. However, I feel like I haven't time managed very well as it's already nearly the end of the month! Oh well, the only person who the 'deadline' for is myself anyway so I'm trying not to be too harsh on myself.

Anything I have learnt

I have more of an appreciation for gouache combined with watercolour, it really does help bring out the colours. I think my previous experience with gouache (on an A3 sized piece of paper) soured me as I think it is much better utilised on a smaller sized piece of paper (A5 sized I think)

I also have a better appreication for how much planning goes into even a fairly small picture - the theme, references, poses, colours. Even for my rough plans they took more time than I anticipated. Another thing is that it was interesting notcing the small differences in artstyles. I would say that my typical artstyle is fairly cartoony and vaguely anime-esque but not in the same was as Qinni's (generally mine is flatter) so needing to layer colours and soften my lines to 'capture' it better were not things I thought I would be thinking about!

Onto the final piece!