September 28, 2019

Gouache paint, India ink, Strathmore Bristol Paper.
Gift made for Master Onóra’s elevation.

When I found out that my very close friend Onóra was being elevated to Laurel I was beyond thrilled.  She is hands down one of the best artists I know and so deserving of this honor. I knew I wanted to give her some sort of gift and since she had been helping me so much with my art I thought it would be fitting for me to create something for her.  

I wanted to do something with a Laurel wreath, of course, but also knew that I needed to add bats, since she loves them and they are a Goth symbol.  I found an assortment of medieval bats from various manuscripts to use. I originally was going to make the bats black but wanted the background to be black and wanted them to be consistent so I made them shades of brownish gray.  I also wanted to include a snail, since that is her signature that she puts on all her scrolls. I included the unicorn from her heraldry, but changed it to black with a red mane and tail to represent her hair and clothes. Deciding a background ended up being the hardest part.  I went with black with a metallic silver ivy design.

My process for this scroll was very inefficient.  I sketched out the wreath, bats, snail and unicorn.  Then I drew in the ivy background. I painted the silver ivy next.  Then I went back to put the black. This was incredibly time consuming.  After I put all the black in I went back and went over the silver again to give it another coat and fix anywhere the black got on it.  It would have been much easier had I done the black first and silver after, but live and learn. Next I did the laurel wreath. I did not have an exemplar to work from for this so I had to decide how to shade it.  This was the most shading I had done to date. Shading with gouache is very different from using acrylic, which was my only experience before this. I struggled with it and layered it many times to get it the way I wanted.  I did the bats next. They went much quicker than the wreath. When I did the snail I tried to emulate her style as best as I could and used red and black. The unicorn was also a bit tricky for me, but I think I got it pretty close to hers.  I also included a small white lily, my signature, peeking out from behind the snail.   I outlined it all with India Ink with a small brush. This was the first time I did not out line with Micron pen before painting. I didn’t use the Micron at all and found that I have much more control with the small brush.

I gave her the scroll during her vigil.  She seemed to really love it and was proud of me for my shading, which felt awesome.  It was a great day and I was so glad to be part of it with her.