Paint small and paint smaller - discworld fan art

Inspired by...

and


I'm takiing a break from my goose and experimenting with a wizzard.  

this is the Wizzard that Nicole made

and to show off how small the painting is, it's about the same size as his hat - 4 inches.



Now, to wait for it to dry.

Maybe I might paint another one while I wait?  

That is such a small painting! I hadn't realized how small it was until you put it next to his hat. Wow! It doesn't look small at all!

Thanks.

It's kind of fun painting tiny details.  But it also reminds me I'm overdue for an eye exam.

I'm using colour charcoal for the drawing.  Some of the charcoal smudges into the paint if I forget to knock off the dust with a soft brush.   I am challenging myself to draw them by hand.  Trying to pay attention to the details and larger shapes at the same time.



When painting, I have a black and white printout I can put little dabs of paint on to check the values.  If the paint disappears, I got it right.  It's good training



And another one to put to one side to dry.

Showing this one to a few friends, I don't think I got the leaves right.  It's supposed to be potato plants.  

Maybe once the colour is on it it will be better?

The leaves look like potato leaves, but I'm not sure how many people look at potato leaves that often. You only see potato leaves if you grow potatoes. You don't see potato leaves on potatoes at the grocery store, like carrot leaves and beet leaves. People don't draw potato leaves in stories, like pumpkin or corn. They're not found wild in nature like blackberries. Even if you grow potatoes, you probably don't spend that much time looking at their leaves, because they don't require much weeding or harvesting amidst the leaves,.

Do your friends grow potatoes? If they don't grow potatoes, don't worry about them not being able to identify them as potatoes.

the making of the octavo, the most powerful book on discworld.

Our wizzard is the only one fabled to survive reading it.







And now to let him dry.

Some of you might have guessed, I'm not posting these in real time.  Yet.

To get to this first layer, each takes me at least two days of drawing and two or three days of painting.

This tiny detail stuff is tricky for me.  It's a lot slower than I usually paint.  Trying to focus on details and guess which are best done earlier in the painting and which can be more easily added in the top layers (like the stars on the hat, I hope).

I had posted about it before, but wanted to share a pair of my own, fandom tinies. These are Good Omens based and watercolour on salvaged ivory.

Beautiful!

Thank you for sharing your painting.

I love good omens.  One of my favourite books of all time, if not The favourite.

r ranson wrote:the making of the octavo, the most powerful book on discworld.

Our wizzard is the only one fabled to survive reading it.



And now to let him dry.

Oooooo! This turned out so lovely! You did an amazing job with the texture of his robe. And, I love how you situated the original picture so perfectly on the canvas. Very well done!

For over a week, a moth guarded our stairway and attacked all who dare enter.  So, of course, when he was having a rest from a particularly energetic imitation of a chaos butterfly, i shot him.  With my picture box.  So I could paint him, or her.  





A simple image,  but I took a lot more care trying to get the cone shape working on the hat.

And now, to let him dry.

Nicole Alderman wrote:

Oooooo! This turned out so lovely! You did an amazing job with the texture of his robe. And, I love how you situated the original picture so perfectly on the canvas. Very well done!

Thank you.

I hope it will still be lovely when colour happens. I'm very nervous about that as I'm not great with colour yet.

r ranson wrote:For over a week, a moth guarded our stairway and attacked all who dare enter.  So, of course, when he was having a rest from a particularly energetic imitation of a chaos butterfly, i shot him.  With my picture box.  So I could paint him, or her.  



A simple image,  but I took a lot more care trying to get the cone shape working on the hat.

I love your use of light, contrast and line. It's such a nicely done painting and fantastic composition. The moth on his hat is just too perfect, in so many ways!

I wish I could take the credit.  Mothra choose the composition and the lighting was perfect.  Like the universe was saying "paint me!"

I suppose I should have thought of this question sooner.

What does one do with 4" square paintings?  

My ridiculous first thought is: "Decorate a doll room with them!" (like the 18 inch "American Girl" and Maplelea Canadian Girl dolls), because that's the right scale for them. But, you probably don't have such a doll, let alone a to-scale room for it!

You could cluster a bunch of them together in an art wall.

You could put them on knick-knack shelves amidst other pretty/magical looking objects.

You could decorate a wizzard shelf and it would look like they were tiny self-portraits of said wizzard! Fill it with other wizardly knick-knacks, like pretty rocks, preserved butterflies, tiny jars of spices, beeswax candles, painted eggs--especially ones that look like dragon eggs-- etc!

His first adventure .  Every action figure needs accessories.





Now to let him dry.

I wonder how the first paintings are doing?

I had some paint leftover from another painting, so I mixed up some transparent colours.  Got part way into it, and the first layer started rubbing off once a little bit of oil paint was applied.  Underbounding strikes.

I'm putting the wizzard to one side to cure more before continuing on.

Starting on the first glazing layer and it's painful to see just how little paint it takes, and just now much paint I use to mix a colour.  I'm hopeful, these colours will work for multiple mini paintings.

But it's something worth planning for in the future so each painting shares the same colourway

Gauging the amount of paint to make/mix is so hard! I'm currently painting at a much larger scale than I usually do, and I'm constantly amazed at how quickly the paint gets used up. It makes me realize why there are so many shades/hues of paint available at the store--sometimes it's just easier to buy the color you're going to need, so you don't have to worry about mixing up a batch and then wasting some because it  was too much--or having inconsistent color because you had to make more.

(I'm currently making a fantasy-themed cardboard pinball machine for the physics class I'm teaching. (All the kids are making their own, and mine is for demonstration purposes). I mixed up my own watercolors to paint it, and kept almost running out, or running out. I'm used to painting small. It's so hard to know how much paint to make for something!)

a fantasy-themed cardboard pinball machine

This sums up my Christmas Wishlist since I was about 6 years old.  That is so cool!  

When it's done, and if you have any dragons kicking about, could we have some photos?  You know, for some reason.  (for those not in the know yet, several of these reference photos I'm working from for my fan art are taken by Nicole who also made the wizzard.)

Potato stroll got the first colour layer.



I made a mix of stand to linseed oil about 1:6, and oiled out the painting.   Using as little paint as possible, and sometimes mixing in some of my oil, glazed away.

There is some weirdness with the pigment falling between the weave of the canvas and not sitting evenly.  



Although, it goes on smooth, after a few moments, it falls into the gaps.  It doesn't look bad from far away, but these are designed to be viewed cose up, so..?

Also, I am not happy with the colour of the leaves yet.  It's going to need another layer or several.



His hat also needs fixing.

Now to let him dry

Your leaf color reminds me of how unhappy I've always been with the trees/greenery I've tried to paint, especially with oil. They were always too vibrant, but if I made them more desaturated, they looked off. You leaves look better than mine ever did, and I'm curious to see what you do to make them look more "natural."

Thanks

I think I know what I did and how to modify it for next time.  But I'm having trouble finding words for it.

One big mistake is i was trying to match colour from a glowing screen.  That can really trick the eye.

The other element is more difficult to find the words.   This helps.



My gamut was too much in the bright greens and not a big enough gamut triangle thing.

To make the green, I used phthalo blue which is a cool blue (leans slightly to the green side of blue on the wheel.  And the yellow was azo which is also a cool yellow (leans green).  These make vibrant green that glow.  Too vibrant.

But that's okay, because for this layer, too vibrant is better than too much the other way (i hope) as I can dull it down with the next glaze.

Also, these are nice tiny paintings to explore and experiment.   I can always paint better ones later when I have more skill.

To calm the green (desaturate it) I already mixed, adding some brown or red usually does the trick.  It's on the opposite side of the colour circle is how I remember which colours to add when I need to calm down a colour.  Since I'm working with transparent colours, transparent iron oxide red and trans iron ox yellow both helped calm the greens differently.  

Along those lines, the colour of the underpainting is influential .   Each of these had a different underpainting but I attempted to keep the top layer the same.




If I wasn't limited to transparent pigments, black and yellows make very natural looking greens.  I'm especially fond of ivory black (actually a very dark blue) and yellow ochre.