Hello Steemit!
So today, taking a break from the Hawaii posts to bring you the behind the scenes of my latest painting that you might have seen on Steepshot!
I actually wrote about this on my standalone blog, so I'll be bringing over a lot of what I already wrote over here for you guys :) Hope you enjoy!
Concept
As the title suggests, the piece is based off the Weaver and Herdsman folktale, which is well-known in several Asian countries, particularly China and Korea. If you’re not familiar, essentially the weaver and the herdsman fall in love with each other and are allowed to marry so long as they keep up their work. However, they are so madly in love that eventually they slack off their duties to spend more time with each other, which pisses of the higher ups. They force them to separate, only giving them one day a year to see each other. Because these are celestial beings we’re talking about, on the day that they try to see each other, there’s a giant river in between them that is too deep and fast for them to cross. Surprise, it’s the Milky Way!
So the Weaver is distraught and begins to cry, which causes a torrential downpour on earth. The animals, not wanting to drown, round up a quick townhall to figure out a solution. Eventually the magpies agree to fly up and create a birdy bridge so the two lovers can reunite. This solves the crying and saves everyone from drowning. They say that there are white patches on the magpies from where their feathers rubbed off from the two people climbing over them. There’s also some further celestial/constellation connections involved, but that’s basically the gist of the story! Pretty dramatic, right? Talk about star-crossed.
This is a story I’ve known about since my childhood, but the train of thought that led to it most recently started with a burning desire to answer my 4th grade self’s undying question: how the heck do looms work, and how in the world do those woven blankets get designs?? This led to a Youtube deep-dive (the answer is that they smack the yarn down) that subliminally lingered in my mind when I was trying to figure out what to paint.
Sketch
Initially, I was planning on doing something simple (hah!) to practice my gouache with, starting with solo figures. Then I sketched out a woman sitting cross-legged holding some thread, and that idea triggered the myth, and as you can see in the sketches below, that “simple” evolved into something more complex, and I knew I’d need a medium that I was more comfortable in to pull off the look I wanted.
You’ll notice there’s 2 versions of the sketch. The one in my sketchbook is really the first “sketch” of the final idea. I then traced it onto a sheet of loose-leaf paper (thanks mom and dad for shipping my light pad over!) and then fleshed out the details more. This loose-leaf version would be the “master sketch” so to speak that I’d do a final trace over before painting. I kept the master sketch as well in case I want to repaint this in gouache after all, or do a version in charcoal.
Painting
Now for the fun part! First let's see the finished pencil line.
Everything is drawn in pretty lightly overall, with all my details more properly fleshed out, yet still in a relatively simple style. You’ll notice some compositional changes I made, such as removing the beam and background details, as well as using a landscape orientation. I wanted to keep the focus on the front and not distract the eye with the unnecessary. I should note that it’s been a while since I’ve done a straight-up illustrative work like this. The most important part in this piece for me is the relationship between the two lovers. I wanted to capture that post-marital honeymoon bliss, not quite neglecting their duties entirely, but certainly focusing more on their partner. With that said, I knew the details would be important, especially which details I did choose to include, and I tried to keep it to mainly storytelling elements (the loom and shoulder yoke to signify what each character did, the magpies for their part later in the story) as well as small things that would convey that they are married and live together (the two pairs of shoes, the pots and plants). The hairstyles and outfit choices are also important, as both of them are wearing traditionally “married” hairstyles, and their looser garments not only suggest that maybe it’s hot outside, but a level of intimacy as well. While I wanted to keep the setting traditional, my mom did think that the amount of skin shown suggested a more modern setting…oh well!
I started first by painting the skin tones. With watercolors, generally the idea is to go light to dark. However for this, I wanted to outline my shadows first, and then apply my values as fit. I went with the conventional female/lighter, male/darker skin tones, but I think in this context it does make sense since he’s a herdsman and spends all day outside. I did go with a higher contrast with hair color for the weaver, giving her that shiny black do, and went with a dark brown for the guy. You can see the final still below.
So...have you caught on to the blatant error I made? Something had been bugging me while I was painting, and I realized I had drawn the wrong foot for the herdsman! I quickly made the correction after painting. I also think I could use more practice overall with shadows and such, but for now I thought it was okay. One of the benefits of a simpler style, is simpler details lol.
The next thing I wanted to tackle were their clothes and the objects closest to them. I mulled over what color to give them, but went with white, as I thought keeping them in white would help draw the attention towards them, as everything else would be painted. I also wanted to keep track of balancing all the browns and yellows in the image. Initially the mats were straight yellow, but I imagined that our resident weaver created them (because why wouldn’t she?) and figured that she’d make more than just a basic mat! I looked up some reference images to get a grasp of the sort of designs a more traditional Korean mat might have, and applied that to the image.
After finishing this part, I ended up taking a GIANT nap lmao. Like, three hours. Watercolor is hard work! After I finally woke up, I finished up the painting, meticulously detailing in the magpies and their little eyes (all the whites of the paper! no white gel pen used) and voila! The final piece!
Fun fact: while I gave our weaver red shoes to help balance out the brighter hues of her yarn, the idea was inspired by a different folktale: the Korean Cinderella! In the version I’m familiar with, she was given a beautiful blue hanbok and red shoes (which of course got left behind and then were used to track her down lol) While I don’t think there’d be any way the weaver could also be Cinderella, I thought it’d be a cute cameo, and certainly came in handy to the overall color composition.
So there’s the finished piece! I decided not to ink it as I liked the softer look of the pencil, and thought the lines came through just enough, especially around their faces. I’m so happy with how this came out, and I’m looking to do more Korean folklore-inspired pieces. I hope you guys enjoyed the piece (and the process!) as well!
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