February - Week 1

Written 03/03/2025

Final piece!

A Welsh Rose's Heart

Watercolour and gouache painting of a brunette woman with teary green eyes, her mouth is covered by a white rose and thorns. Her heart, which is the bulb of several daffodils, is broken

The theme

The loss of the Welsh language and identity, being suppressed by the English. Not only do the roses cover her mouth and cut the dragon's tongue, they are cutting off the daffodils and her heart is broken. Loss of language is not usually casued by one singular action but by multiple.

Thoughts on the process

I did this in about two days (not sequentially), which I do regret as I think I could have taken more time but unfortunately I just kept putting it off due to other IRL commitments and my (probable) ADHD if I'm being honest XD. Like last month, I took photos throughout my process - you can see the progressionhere

Comparison with inspiration

So yeah, you can see that mine is a lot flatter again with much less depth in colour. I think my proportions are a bit too 'realistic' (I made the head a bit too small compared to Qinni). I also did my lines too thick (I did try to keep them thinner but I was rushing the lines a bit). I am happy with the dress's gradient (though I wish I had made it a bit more obvious). I think my mistake was doing this on an A4 piece of paper rather than an A5 sized piece of paper (it was the only watercolour paper I could find!)