Loosening up

Whilst creating this water colour sketch I was determined to loosen up my style, enjoy the process more, and not think too much about the final outcome. As always I loved the natural bleed of the water colour, I also liked the strange proportions of the woman, as I felt it added to the sense of ‘looseness’ that I have been chasing. I initially painted her hair and face wrong, and went over it with some more paint, that then created a dark shadow on her face which I really liked. When I initially attempted to correct her, the paint bled out too far and in an attempt to cover it up, I ended up having to give her this odd square hairstyle, which I ended up really liking as it made the painiting look even more loose and peculiar.

The crocodile is one of several objects, shapes, and animals frequently depicted on Asafo flags, and within African folklore in general. I’ve never been good at painting animals, though I do find that having a reference image helps alot, that said I wanted to avoid painting the crocodile exactly as I saw it, and instead capture it’s esssense. I think I did a good job of painting something that was loose, but still easily identifiable as a crocodile. That said, I still wasn’t able to capture the unique style, and loosness of the figures depicted on the Asafo flags.