Inspire Me Thursday: Show and Tell

For Inspire me Thursday, this is another portrait of one of my students. This is a simple watercolor but it took a few steps to achieve the crisp lines. First I covered the paper with artist's tape, a type of tape that won't tear the paper underneath when taken off. I then drew the design of my student's face on the tape and took an exacto to it, cutting out the negative space (of the tape, but not of the paper underneath) which I knew I would later fill in with watercolor. Essentially, I made a stencil out of tape. When I finished cutting out my stencil I pulled off the tape in the sections I wanted color, leaving the naked paper underneath. I then filled in these openings with watercolor. This way I could just splash paint onto the paper to achieve a spontaneous looking effect but not worry about the edges... because when the watercolor dried I simply pulled the tape off, leaving the paint where the openings in the stencil had been. I drew over this with ink and splashed a light wash over certain sections of the painting to make it more than just a stencil. Then I put it in Photoshop and upped the levels so that it had a lot of contrast--this made the background white and the edges really pop. I like seeing the rich colors of the watercolor confined into crisp shapes, something that I could not do if I had not worked with a stencil. Because of the variety of methods I took to make this piece, it was a joy to create--from the detailed, meditative nature of cutting with an exacto to the free, painterly strokes of watercolor to the fun experimentation on Photoshop. I think it captures my subject very well too--she is another girl from the Taiyal trib, in second grade.