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The idea for this print came to me late at night, looking out on the dark forest behind my house, and so I called it the Dark Dreams colorway. Most days on the west coast the ocean is more silver than blue, and this print conveys the feeling of the mist rolling down the hills and over that shimmery icy water.
See the Dark dreams print on the artist collective website Red Bubble in my jesschampagne section.
In 2021 I was I had the privilege of participating in the promotion of the Capital Regional Districts new exploration of using iNaturalist to encourage community awareness about biodiversity as part of the Environmental Protection department. This was also the first time that were able to use instagram to it’s full potential, by using not only instagram and Facebook, but instagram stories as well.
Note: This was part of my work as part of the capital regional district (the regional government in southern Vancouver Island). To view other corporate items, view my graphic design portfolio.
Shop is now open in limited quantities and other quick news.
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This was such a fun piece to make. The idea for this piece has been been on my idea wall for weeks and I was glad to finally achieve it. Humpback whales are magical, and I love the pure joy they express when you watch them dive and breach.
Look closely for the following Easter eggs:
a sunfish
a starfish
an orca
a self portrait (a crab!)
a girl swimming
bull kelp
fucus
Process
It all started out as an experiment on various kinds of watercolor paper:
After painting, I scanned each whale and then drew the blossoming portions by hand on an iPad. I then transferred it over to my laptop to add the gradient layer.
Through trial and error I learned that the Illustrator Live trace tool does not do well with sketchy style tools, it did not like my pencil or my shale tool! When I traces it it lost a lot of detail and created thick lines. (To see the difference, look closely at the whale on the right. The lines are thicker.) It was unfortunate because it’s of great benefit to be able to have my floral layer as a vector, in terms of easily adding gradient and in terms of having a design become scaleable.
In the end I redrew the floral whale, this time by using the eraser shale tool and erasing the design on a white layer. Then I imported into Photoshop and applied a gradient underneath. Downside: not scaleable. Upside: got to keep all my file details and texture.
Here’s some individual shots:
Some combined florals for fun:
Later, Edit: I realized a little later that creating a white layer and erasing into the layer was just a sillier way of drawing on a clear layer and applying a layer mask in photoshop, something I’ve done a million times before but it didn’t occur to me for some reason. The one upside to the erase-into-white technique is that you can place a spray tool style gradient behind it to watch the colour as you draw. However, now Procreate has the function of allowing a layer masks too, so you could equally do it that way.
If you're at all like me, you might find portrait painting a little intimidating.
This rainbow skin tutorial feels more accessible to the beginner portrait artist because the goal isn't really accurate colors and values. The effect is a little wistful, ethereal and sometimes somber.
A fun pairing with these colorful portraits are Prismacolor Color-ase pencils. I like red, vermillion, purple or lavender.
Red
Yellow (or Peach)
Blue/Purple
Green
You can find a good speed paint of rainbow skin at the following: Rainbow Skin Class!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8NSeJnajs8
You can find a full, short tutorial on Skillshare: Rainbow Skin - How to Create Colorful, Confident Skin Tones in Watercolor
(Note, this is not a sponsored post. I am receiving nothing from Skillshare!)
