Sketchbook Sunday: Watercolors of Children

These are three little watercolor paintings I did from pencil sketches of children in my daughter's dance class. The sketches were created for and used in my book project Dancing in the Garden. Something about these three drawings compelled me to also make them into these stand alone paintings. Each painting is 5" x 5" on 90 lb. white Stonehenge paper.

The original drawings

Dancing in the Garden: Autumn Glow

18" x 11" (block)
22" x 15" (paper)

This is the last work of art for Dancing in the Garden! I have been working for so many hours, so many days in a row during this residency that I feel like I can't even see straight anymore. So I don't know how I feel about this yet, but I suspect I like it. 

Dancing in the Garden: Roly Polies

18" x 11" (block)
22" x 15" (paper)

The title for this one is inspired by the pill bugs that kids love to catch and that curl up into little balls when they are frightened.

Dancing in the Garden: Hopping Down the Path

White line woodcut (unique print)
Watercolors on 140 lb Canson watercolor paper
9" x 12" (image) 11" x 14" (paper)  

This is the latest print for the Dancing in the Garden series. I'm pleased with the composition for the boy character's solo. However, this first proof is printed in very bright colors, which evokes a cheerful mood, but it doesn't quite seem to match with the other images for the book. I think I'll have to print it in a slightly different color palette.

Dancing in the Garden: Purple Dress Solo

White line woodcut (unique print)
Watercolors on 140 lb Canson watercolor paper
9" x 12" (image) 11" x 14" (paper)

This is the much improved proof of the print I posted about yesterday. I made the dress a bit more purple, I darkened some of the shadows, I added some purples and oranges to the red leaves, and I generally got a cleaner, sharper image because I set up a better registration block. This took me three hours to print just once, and that was with a block that was already painted up and saturated with color from the first proof. But worth it!

The photograph isn't great, but it was the best I could do at the moment. White line woodcuts are difficult to get a good photograph, so I'll have to work that out.

Dancing in the Garden: First Proof

This is the first proof for the first print intended for my next book project, Dancing in the Garden. It will be a series of white line woodcuts of four particular children dancing in the stunning landscapes of the Morris Arboretum.

This print is definitely not a finished version. I need to play around with the colors and get a crisper overall registration. But I like the drawing on the block and many of the color interactions. It starts to give a sense of what I'm going for, which is a cheery, folksy,  mosaic of children in motion embedded in an array of outdoor plantlife.

Okay, back to work...