Triptych of 11″x14″ Aquabord panels
Dark brown ink, drawn with a crow quill nib and then shaded with a wash.
This triptych painting in dark brown ink takes you into a steampunk American Rockies wilderness, where two scouts watch, helpless, as an airship descends in billows of thick, black, smoke.
This is one of my contributions to the Artist Gallery display at Clockwork Alchemy.
This piece had a longer evolution than most of my artwork. First came the decision to paint an ink piece for Clockwork Alchemy, and I wanted it to be dramatic, so I decided on a triptych. One of my dear friends is often a huge source of inspiration, and she suggested a crashing airship. I had been thinking about the sweeping panorama paintings of the Victorian, so I started working out how to lay out the landscape.
One of the things I always keep in mind when creating multiple-panel artwork is the balance of composition between each panel and all panels. That is, all the panels together should create a coherent image, and each panel individually should create a coherent image. So, on the right is the close-up figures, looking away to the left. In the middle panel is the tree and just a hint of the crash, so it has a connection between what is close and what is very distant. On the left is distant view, with the crashing airship. Similar angles and lines are mirrored across all panels and on each panel, helping to pull them all together. The movement from close to distant helps to create flow between the panels and prevent them from looking identical.
The line art stage looked like this:
Click for Larger View
I started this painting almost a year ago, referencing a photo I look myself at Halloween. It is a devotional work, dedicated to the sabbat of Samhain, the Celtic new year and the half-way point between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. It is the time I recognize as the start of the new year, when the harvest is almost done, winter is quickly coming, and the veil is thin. In 2012, Samhain falls on November 6.
