This is an interesting piece because it comes directly from the passages, but uses different mediums in one image. I actually started the tree trunk in oil pastels that I blended together with my finger. Years ago I saw an exhibit of Canadian painter Emily Carr‘s work and being able to view it up close let me see how many colors she actually used to create “brown.” This tree uses black, red, green and several browns, which gives it more variety than using a couple of browns. I then blended them together with my finger.
I wanted a weeping willow effect, which I did using all of my green watercolor pencils and then adding water with a brush to get a background. Then I switched to colored pencils and drew curved lines in each of the green colors. I think I used the colorless blender to soften the edges.
I don’t have access to my scanner so I took a picture with my camera phone that I pulled into Photoshop. Because the trunk is so dark and the leaves so light, I toned for the leaves and then copied the trunk into a different file where I toned the trunk before pasting it onto a new layer and flattening. I used the eyedropper tool to get the colors for the text to match the artwork.
SpiritWordArt artwork Year A 