Category Archives: Watercolour

The Cats of Yule

December 23, 2017by karencomics 1 Comment

That has kind of a nice ring, eh? “The Cats of Yule” — I think it should be a song, or maybe the name for an Irish-style fiddle tune! I’ve […]

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Cats, Watercolour

Pine Cone, Artichoke, or Pangolin?

September 10, 2017by karencomics Leave a comment

Now that I’m back in my nice quiet studio, and caught up on all the things that need catching up on after a trip, I’m starting to make some time […]

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art challenge, Watercolour, zooly

Brown Paper Critters

August 9, 2017by karencomics 2 Comments

During the last few days of Zooly, I ran across a stack of handmade watercolour paper that I had put aside years ago and forgotten about. I originally bought it […]

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art challenge, Drawing-a-Day, Watercolour, zooly

Painting the Caracal

August 1, 2017by karencomics Leave a comment

I can’t believe the Zooly Art Challenge is over! A month of drawing and painting animals was great fun, despite missing out on some due to my adventures with my […]

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art challenge, Cats, Technique of the Week, tutorials, Watercolour, zooly

Hey, Let’s Draw Animals!

July 25, 2017by karencomics 5 Comments

There is one week left of the Zooly Art Challenge — if you still want to try drawing/painting/sculpting/whatever some critters, there’s still time to jump in! And good news — […]

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art challenge, Drawing-a-Day, Watercolour, zooly

An Eclectic Menagerie

July 16, 2017by karencomics 6 Comments

The Zooly Art Challenge continues, and I’ve almost managed to keep up by adapting my work methods. I was finding the little cartoons that I had intended to do all […]

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art challenge, Watercolour, zooly

A Mermaid a Day

February 21, 2017by karencomics 4 Comments

…keeps the blues away! Hi everybody, just a quick heads-up that over on my Mermaid Music webcomic’s blog, I’m posting a cute little sketch card of sea-folk every day this […]

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art challenge, Mermaids!, Watercolour

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Comics Class
Watercolour Basics
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Technique of the Week
Polymer Clay maquettes

Upcoming Appearances

Camosun Comic Arts Festival
(Click here for website)
April 13 Camosun College, Victoria BC

Curious Comicon
(Click here for website)
May 4 Country Club Centre, Nanaimo, BC

Van Isle Con
(Click here for website)
June 9 Mary Winspear Centre, Sidney, BC

Phenomacon
(Click here for website)
July 6 Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre, Victoria, BC

The Quadra Cats, a webcomic

When the neighbourhood cats meet a takeout-obsessed Alien Cat, they become impromptu ambassadors for Earth! Updates Mondays and Thursdays.

Mermaid Music, a webcomic!

Mermaid music is the story of a girl who accidentally runs away to sea, and finds herself in deep water indeed! Click the image to read the webcomic from the beginning.

All text and images © Karen Gillmore 2014 -2017

...except as otherwise noted. If you share, please link back to this blog — you'll feel a warm glow right in your karma!

Celtic Art

Wolf and the Stones (pen & ink, watercolour, coloured pencil)

Wolf and the Stones (pen & ink)

Eostre (pen & ink, watercolour, coloured pencil)

Eostre (pen & ink)

Celtic Green Man (pen & ink, watercolour)

Celtic Green Man (pen & ink)

Celtic Dragon (pen & ink, embellished version)

Celtic Dragon (pen & ink, outline version)

Elemental Steed: Air (acrylic)

Elemental Steed: Water (acrylic)

Elemental Steed: Fire (acrylic)

Elemental Steed: Earth (acrylic)

Elemental Manifestations: Water (pen & ink, watercolour, collage)

Elemental Manifestations: Fire (pen & ink, watercolour, collage)

Elemental Manifestations: Air (pen & ink, watercolour, collage)

Elemental Manifestations: Earth (pen & ink, watercolour, collage)

Celtic Seahorses (linocut on banana paper)

Celtic Seahorses (pen and ink)

Celtic Seahorses (pen & ink, watercolour, coloured pencil)

Coloured Pencil

“Two Lips” — from a photo I snapped of a bunch of tulips someone had given me. As the petals started to fall away, they got more and more interesting. This one took quite a long time, lots of burnishing.

“White Rose” — I took a bunch of white silk roses into a class I was teaching one day, and we all had a good time trying to make them look natural, adding backgrounds and suggestions of colour.

“Sheltered” — a demonstration on doing an underpainting in dark grey pencil to establish the values turned into this.

“Broken Seashell” — I like to pick up broken seashells, because their curves are challenging and fun to draw. For this one, I used a technique I often use for figure drawing — woking on toned paper and just picking out the deepest shadow and the highlights with white and black pencils.

“Falling Apples” — When I teach a coloured pencil workshop, I often go buy a bag of apples and hand one out to everyone. Apples are excellent subjects for learning how to build up colour from light to dark. After my demo, he whole class goes back to their tables and becomes very quiet for a while — silence is the sound of creativity! One class I actually had time to draw my apple several times on the same page.

“El Morro” — the famous landmark fort at the mouth of Havana harbour. I got really caught up in the rocks on this one.

“Pink Rose” — One of the most burnished coloured pencil paintings I have ever produced. This little thing is the size of a greeting card, and it took me many hours.

“Bear Hangout” — from a photo I took in Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. There were no visible fences, and everyone wanted to know how I’d gotten so close to the bears! Usually I would just smile and look mysterious.

Woman in Blue — indigo and white Prismacolor pencils on toned paper

Relaxing Woman — burnt sienna and white coloured pencils on toned paper; a fifteen minute pose

The Blues — Indigo and white coloured pencils on toned paper _ ten minute pose

Man Forming a Triangle — coloured pencils on toned paper. Going through my sketches, I was amused to see how many similar poses I’ve drawn over the years — there are only so many ways the human body can fold up, after all. I thought this drawing made an interesting comparison with the previous one.

“Golden Retriever” — coloured pencil. I got the detail of the brush in the background by indenting the paper through a piece of tracing paper with a pencil. The tracing paper protected the working paper from the pencil, and I was able to lightly colour over the indented lines with my coloured pencils, building up layers of mixed colours. I eventually decided the white lines this left were too stark, and went in with very sharp pencils in different colours to tone them down.

Watercolours

“Mount Baker Dreams” — The ferry from Sidney BC to Anacortes , Washington puts in at one of the islands in between. This is what I saw from the dock.

“Sunshine” — funny how cats always find the warm spot in the house!

“Bones of the Earth” — a mountain in the Montana Mission Range that has an oddly shaped top above the treeline. It is not a volcano, but I suspect there is a hollow at the top with a lake. However, I did not climb up there to see.

Wickaninnish Wind — This tree stands by the parking lot at Wickaninnish Beach , in Pacific Rim National Park.

“One Perfect Rose” — an anniversary card I made for my husband some years ago.

“Willow Banks” — part of a large wetland park at the base of Montana’s Mission Mountains that I visited once.

“Rainbow Pebbles” — many of the techniques described here are used in this painting

“Winter Tree” — a Christmas card I did for a friend; the white was all masked off with masking fluid, after which I could paint freely, knowing all that lovely snow would be preserved in pristine white paper.

“Storm Building” — I used a paper towel to lift colour out of a solid sky wash for the clouds, then dripped in a bit of grey, then more water for the backwashes.

pebble sampler — I make samplers of many of the techniques during class, using pebble shapes.

Wildly blooming

“Haunted River” — painted over a saran-wrap texture in multiple glazes; an example of mixing paint on the paper.

“Night Lights” — the background nebula-like blooms of sky colour are salt; the individual stars are dots of white ink.

“Long Beach Sketch” — the backwashes created by dripping water into a wet wash created the clouds and the misty effects in the rocks on the right.

“Edge of the Woods” — I started with very light washes to build up the background and lighter tones of the foreground; the dark trees went in last.

Cuban Tree

The UFOs are coming! Or maybe they are flying hats. Suggested by one of the students, I thought it was a great idea. This demo used salt and gouache to make stars and the explosions (or maybe they are fireworks). The city is just simple brushstrokes with a flat brush.

This demo was to blend a nice sunset wash, and to show how to make very quick trees with brush scribbles.

This demo was to show lifting paint out of a blended wash (and add some more for shadows) to make clouds, and how to make aerial perspective by making distant things lighter and bluer. I wasn’t sure what the landscape was going to be, it sort of evolved as I went along.

Demo to show masking (I masked off the blue areas), and how to draw people in about ten seconds! This is kind of a bizarre picture because the blue areas look like holes in the sky, but I kind of like that effect.