Week 11: Bunny and Egg(plant) Watercolor Painting

The weeks are ticking by so quickly and spring is finally springing! The birds are twitter-pated and chirpy but also, regrettably, the pollen is in full-out “kill the people” mode here in Atlanta. Fortunately, before I broke out into massive hives right after spring break (which are responsible for my delayed publishing of the Week 11 and 12 posts!), I managed to create a little homage to the springtime with a tiny bunny and tiny eggplant still-life that I quite love.

Before we moved to Atlanta we lived further into the country side and our garage/shed had a warren of soft brown bunnies living underneath it. While we lived there, this time of year meant bunnies to me and my kitties.

The little bunny figurine in my still-life is one of 3 – each with a different pose – which reside in the corner of shelves or windowsills in both my mom and granny’s house as well as mine. They’re our little reminders that some “bunny” is thinking of them – we’re silly like that (mushy, I know, but I wouldn’t have it any other way).

I found the tiny eggplants (which I had never seen before) at the local Sprouts and thought the colors complimented one another well… plus – I happen to adore tiny things…

This painting isn’t very large but it took me about two hours from start to finish.  After applying some masking fluid to preserve some of the highlights and also texture on the eggplant I blocked in some wet-in-wet tones representing the lightest values before going in with wet-on-dry layers to build the richer tones in the eggplants and figurine.

You can walk through the slideshow below to see the progress in 10 steps from beginning to end. Toward the end I removed the masking fluid and then worked the edges back down a little to make the highlights more integrated into the remainder of the drawing.

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I’m quite happy with how this turned out as a whole – specifically the reflected highlight of the cut eggplant piece which I thought I’d messed up at first.

I will be sending this to my Granny for Easter (and as a Get Well Soon after her shoulder surgery) so I only have another day or so with it. Fortunately for me, I have the little figurine to keep me company in my studio when it’s gone to its new home.