sumeria

Today is a cold, dreary day, and I am inside working on experimental art. This was originally conceived as idea for working the background in an ink wash over gold leaf, but that intention foundered in the face of technical challenges. I know the effect I want can be done - though the only western artists I've seen work over gold leaf were working in either oil or acrylic, neither of which I use atm, I have seen enough nihonga artists work over gold leaf in mediums closer to watercolor than anything else to know it can be done. (The paints in question, like other types of "japanese style" watercolors are not watercolor because the binder used is not gum arabic, but they're water based pigments not oil or plastic, so the technical challenges should be surmountable. I just don't know what nihonga artists use as a fixative/ground over the gold, and none of the solutions I have access to worked for the effect I wanted. Le sigh.

There will still be gold leaf in the final, I just had to radically reconceive how I wanted to use it. And I have no idea what the overall effect would be, so that's exciting.

The idea for this piece originated in wanting to do something for Cang Lan Jue that was post-series, showing Xiao Lanhua's aesthetic merging with the Cangyan Sea aesthetic - richer colors, still with the gold flowers, but with long sweeping thorns... And the pose definitely owes something to Klimt, which I blame on the fact that I was thinking about the use of gold while drawing it.

Initial pencils when first transferred to paper (I generally sketch on the computer, where I can draw different elements on different layers and then move them around.)	Inked lineart - I decided to forgoe inking the pattern on Dongfeng Qingcang's robes, since it's going to be done in something opaque, and can thus go down over the watercolor.	Current progress - Xiao Lanhua's hair and dress were the first elements I wanted to focus on rendering, so I could get the masking fluid off of the flowers in her jewelry, since I don't want to leave that on the paper longer than necessary.