~ How It's Made ~
Fruits of the Spirit
Nathaniel's mom requested a painting that illustrates the Bible verse from Galations 5:22-23:
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."
She was planning to hang the artwork in Nathaniel's room. It would also be a gift for him when he goes off to college.
The first thing that comes to mind is fruits, literally. So I worked on 7 to 8 drafts for Nathaniel's mom to choose from. After deciding on the fruits and its layout, we also decided on the fonts of the verse.
The fruits were to be on a light blue water-like splashy background. I decided the color of the fonts to be a delicious, bright, orange. It would stand out nicely in contrast to the clear blue background.
All drafts were done in Photoshop. It is a great tool to arrange and rearrange things around during the drafting phase. Much thought and time is put into this planning phase. It is essential to get the design looking right at this stage. Like building a house, if the foundation is weak, no matter how expensive your flooring is, or how beautiful your curtains are, the house will crumble.
Once the design is set, the painting process begins.
Choosing the right paper to work on is important. I knew I had to use large amounts of water and masking fluid. I chose to work with Canson's watercolor artboard. It is thick enough to take lots of water without warping. One less thing to worry about!
Using masking tape allows me to have a clean, crisp edge. Scotch tape #2080 is gentle and does not rip the paper after use.
Other brands work too but usually they are stronger and will rip some parts of the paper. The trick is stick the tape to your clothing a couple times before using it on the paper. That way the adhesive is less strong and wouldn't rip the paper as much.
I use a watercolor pencil to outline the fruits. The watercolor pencil marks will disappear as I use watercolor later so I don't need to worry about erasing pencil marks.
I put masking fluid on the area where the fruits are. QoR masking fluid is the best I have used. A few other brands I tried ripped the paper after it dries. QoR does not.
I use a dotting tool to paint the masking fluid. The fluid dries on the tool quickly and can be removed easily. If you use a brush to paint the masking fluid, the brush will be ruined.
A layer of water is splashed onto the whole paper. Then different tones of blue is added. After it dries, the masking fluid is removed, to leave a white space for the fruits.
The Bible verse is cut out on a vinyl sticker using a Silhouette Cameo.
This video on my YouTube channel documents the process from here to the end.
Multiple colors are used on each fruit to add interest and dimension.
This is the color study of the grapefruit.
