Keeping track of progress on creative projects
Valdemar continues.
I find the leaf particularly hard to see in this one, even when face to face with the original rather than trying to view it via this photo. It’s a shorter, wider leaf with irregular edges, two factors that work against visibility in the Poe series.
Back to the Kuretake Gansai watercolors for a combination of wet-on-wet background and full-strength-and-diluted foreground. The colors are 57 Turquoise Green Deep and 67 Indigo.
I’ve now swatched all but two of the colors in the 48-color set.
The color scheme from #234 reproduced with Copic markers.
My ink refills arrived last week, so now I’m all set for my full range of cool grey markers.
Let Ghost Week 2026 commence!
I thought I’d get things underway with something simple (watercolor) that I hadn’t done in awhile (grey paper).
If I’d given it any thought, it might have occurred to me that the white in particular would be a problem. Being watercolor – and white as well – it faded to near total transparency on the absorbent grey paper. It took multiple coats to make it visible at all, especially on the squares that needed to actually look white. Thus this ended up taking longer than I expected.
The foreground (Kuretake gold and blue gold) on the other hand went on relatively easily. I typically don’t use a lot of metallics, but I have something in mind for these in another project.
There’s a lot going on with this one.
For starters, it’s the first bi-state leaf ghost. I did the under sketch at home in Kansas City. Then I painted the background on vacation just north of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Then I painted the foreground back home in Kansas.
Part of the decision was driven by the weather. Frequent rain kept me off the deck for most of the trip, so I only ended up with time enough for the background. But more than the timing, I felt strongly that the leaf needed to be done in gouache (which of course I didn’t have with me).
The watercolor part was the same as the last one, only with 004 Ivory Black. The result reminded me of Stephen Gammell’s illustrations for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It’s a look I’ve been trying to master digitally for awhile now, so it was fun to see it crop up more or less by accident in a physical medium.
The effect also reminded me of smoke, so much so that I figured the leaf pretty much had to be fire colors. I also wanted it to be solid. Hence the gouache.
Speaking of which, this was my first time blending analogous colors. Both the dark and light squares of the foreground began with Holbein 035 Orange. But then I blended in 003 Scarlet for the dark sections and 033 Deep Yellow for the light sections.
Which also makes this my first foray into a mixed media piece using watercolor and gouache.
And technique-wise, this is also my first time doing a lift on dry watercolor. The little bit of background in row three column four bled in from the dark paint above it. So I lifted out a little of the color to bring back the needed contrast.
The result is almost narrative. Is it a top-down view of a flame floating in a cloud of smoke? Or perhaps a burning ember with smoke behind it? I’m generally not trying for storytelling with the whole leaf ghost thing, but I don’t mind it creeping in here and there.
And finally, the ghost number is sequential digits. We won’t have that again for another 111 entries.
Vacation time! This ghost finds me painting on the deck outside the caboose we stay at every May.
Though I like the leaf colors, the real star of the show is the background. I painted this using my portable Koi watercolors set. The background is painted wet on wet using 022 Crimson Lake at full strength and considerably watered down (you can see the watery mix in the upper right corner of the tray). The result is eerily biological, like a microscope slide of organ tissue or something like that.
Also during the trip I finished swatching all the colors in the Koi set. You can see the tiny sketchbook I used for swatching on the table in the upper left.
New kitten making up her mind about whether the leaf ghost creation process meets with her approval. The jury may still be out.
The tale of M. Valdemar’s peculiar passing continues.
The leaf this time had a mouth-like gap on the left side, and I was curious to see how well it would show up. It’s there if you look carefully.
