Sean O'Halloran: One Mark at a Time

After blacking the back of my enlarged, digital drawing with a piece of 6B graphite, I tape the enlarged image to my stretched sheet of Arches, making sure that the piece is appropriately positioned and that there is plenty of white space around the image area.

I use a colored pencil (green, in this case) to draw over the enlarged image, pressing hard enough to transfer the soft graphite from the back of the sheet to the front of the watercolor paper, but not pressing so hard as to emboss the surface of the paper. I use colored pencil so I can see what I have retraced versus what still remains. (Using a normal graphite pencil would certainly do the same job, but it's impossible to see what's been transferred.)

I've taped together a four-piece digital output of my revised sketch,
blackened its reverse side with 6B graphite, and taped
the resulting "transfer sheet" to my stretched watercolor paper. 

This image demonstrates how I revise my sketches using Photoshop.
I build the sketch in layers: Sean O'Halloran on one layer,
his wife and horse on another, fairies on a third. This way
I can manipulate the individual characters independently
of one another. You saw in a previous post how I enlarged
Sean O'Halloran in relation to his surroundings.

The resulting transfer is typically very light, as you can see—or almost see—here.

The transferred graphite line in barely perceptible
on the watercolor paper; you can just make out the cross
on the left, and the horse head in the upper center of the image.

Depending on the look I have in mind for the finished artwork, I might begin painting immediately after transferring the drawing, or I might work up the drawing with more detail than in the original. In this case, I used an HB pencil to complete details not present in my original sketches. (Working with watercolor, it's a good idea for me to have a pretty complete drawing in place before I begin painting.)

 I redraw the transferred image using an HB pencil, adding detail
not present in the original sketch.

 Here you can see Sean O'Halloran fumbling for his wife,
whom he is not able to see.

This is a detail from above.

Here is the nearly complete pencil rendering
on my stretched watercolor paper.

Sean O'Halloran: Getting Started

The first step for me when beginning a new painting is to stretch my paper. I work pretty exclusively on 140# Arches cold press. I'm a process person, which translates into my enjoying the process of stretching paper. (When I teach, a vast majority of my students groan when I tell them to stretch their paper; they prefer buying 400# stock to avoid having to stretch it. Me? I get a lot of satisfaction from it.)

I first start by cutting down a 22 x 30" sheet to 22 x 15".  I make sure to mark the backs of the cut-down sheets, so I know which side is front and which is back. The side from which you can read the watermark is the front. With the exception of Hahn papers, every watermark has verbiage of some sort, which allows you to know which side is the front; Hahn has an image of a rooster with no verbiage, so when I work with their papers, I have to log onto their website to see which direction the rooster needs to face in order to determine which side is the front. But I digress.

I then fill the bathtub with six inches of tepid water. (I make sure that the tub's free of any sort of soap residue, since soap will adversely affect how my washes will lay on the surface. [I also need to make sure there aren't any stray pet hairs in the tub.])

I place the sheet into the water, right-side-up, and carefully submerge it, making certain all of the air bubbles are removed from the underside of the sheet, and that the piece has been completely submerged. (Trapped air pockets will cause irregularities in the sizing that remains in the paper, and this, too, will adversely affect the way my washes lay on the surface.) I let the paper float in the water for fifteen to twenty minutes.

While the paper's soaking up the water and expanding, I collect a piece of 24 x 36" particle board and a staple gun, and return to the tub.

I lay the particle board on the counter, and carefully remove the limp sheet from the tub, picking it up by one corner, removing it from the water on a diagonal, allowing the water to run off easily, all the while supporting it from another corner, preventing the wet, fragile sheet from folding over on itself. (Good watercolor sheets with high rag content can take a lot of tear, but I'm still very careful not to bend or mar the paper, especially while it's this wet.)

I lay the wet sheet on the particle board, grab my staple gun, and attack! I shoot staples into the sheet, all the way around, every 1-1/2 to 2", about 3/8" from the paper's edge.

The cat and dog both hate the racket of the staple gun, and high-tail it out of the house.

When I've finished stapling, I place the board on a flat surface and let it dry. Any wrinkles in the wet paper will flatten out as the surface dries and shrinks. When we lived in New Mexico, the drying process took about ten seconds; here in Savannah, it takes a little longer.

When the paper is dry, I have a beautifully flat sheet of Arches, ready for the deluge of washes I'm about to apply.

In the photo, situated above the stretched sheet are four digital printouts of my revised sketch. I enlarged the image using Photoshop, and output it to letter-sized paper, which I subsequently tape together into a single image. After the taping is complete, I use a stick of 6B graphite to blacken the back of the pieced-together sketch. Then I'm ready to transfer the drawing to the watercolor paper.

Revised Sketch for Sean O'Halloran

This is the original sketch I had done for the painting in the previous post. You can see that my final watercolors resemble the original sketch down to the smallest detail. I love drawing and enjoy the sketching part of the process. And while I was learning watercolor, a rather unforgiving medium to the uninitiated, I learned early on that it's good to have a solid sketch, replete with values, before putting paint to paper.

Below is the revised sketch. I have used (quite literally) bits and pieces of the original drawing, which I put together, montage style, into a revised sketch. If the sketch looks pieced together, it is. And while I like the drawing of the horse and O'Halloran's wife better in this revised sketch, I've pulled back too far and there's no strong focal point. So it's back to the drawing board.

 

Here's the revised sketch (below). I know. I know. You're saying to yourself, "It's the same thing. There's no difference between the two." Remember the backs of the Jack and Jill magazines from when we were kids, and there were two illustrations that on the surface appeared to be the same, but there were differences? Well, there are differences here, too, but not many. I made Sean O'Halloran larger, and changed the shape of his wife's cape in the revised sketch. This provides a stronger focal point, something the original revision was lacking. And this revised revision (!) will serve as the roadmap for my painting.

Sean O'Halloran and the Faerie Lord

Early last year I did a series of illustrations for an original folktale called "Sean O'Halloran and the Faerie Lord" for Cricket Magazine. It was a wonderful tale and I was happy with the way the illustrations came out. The story was about a young mother who was kidnapped by fairies; she was enchanted and became enslaved as the wet nurse for the offspring of the Faerie Lord; her husband was left to fend for his children on his own, continually trying to find his missing wife; ultimately, he was able to capture his bewitched wife when the fairies led her on horseback by the cross on the road.

These are a couple of the images I created for the story. This first one is Sean O'Halloran's wife as she sits, entranced, at the foot of the bed in which the Faerie Queen has just given birth. The midwife is about to hand over the newborn.

The next image is where Sean O'Halloran, having heard that his wife would be led across the countryside by the fairies at nighttime, is flailing about, trying to locate and capture his invisible wife as she passes by. (The bells on the horses have given them away.)

For whatever reason, after the work was done, I wasn't entirely happy with this second image. The composition was forced in a way that, after the piece had gone to press, didn't please me entirely. So I'm going to rework the piece. And I'll post my process here.

Until now, this blog has been where I've posted family stories accompanied by graphite drawings I've done. With this post, the direction of this blog will change. While it will continue to feature my illustration work, it won't necessarily have to do only with family stories.

Enjoy!