Profile

radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)
radiantfracture

July 2025

S M T W T F S
   12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
radiantfracture: a white rabbit swims underwater (water rabbit)
It's been at least a year since I painted anything seriously, and more like two.

But artist Brett Manning ([instagram.com profile] brettmannignart)
posts the Faebruary art challenge every February, and I like the prompts.

I am behind, of course, but that's kind of reassuring. At this rate I will have prompts for all of February. Here's prompt #1, Holly King.



* * * * *

The prompts seem kind of wintry this year.

[ETA: right, I was going to explain why it looks like that.]

I'm always a bit rusty when I approach these prompts because I paint very little when school is in session. I need a certain kind of expansiveness in my mind. Also, a certain kind of exhaustion helps. Maybe they go together.

Anyway, the first painting in a series can be a bit all over the place because of that. This is much less polished than I'd like, but I thought I should post it to get myself back in the habit.

In this case, I was looking at some stickers I had of Kandinsky's art and remembering how much I loved his playful visual language, and thinking it would be nice to make the king's portrait kind of break up into abstraction.

I can't really justify the combination of this style and fairy lore -- it's a strange soup, and not helped by my haphazard execution.

Oh well -- day one!

* * * * *

These days most Insta artists seem to have moved to Patreon, which makes sense for money and flexibility but renders them much harder to find.

2025 is probably the last year I will participate in the art challenge. I've always loved it, but it happens on Instagram, and even if I weren't trying to work out what to do about the ethical situation, the designers have rendered the platform useless for sharing art.

Cross-posted from [instagram.com profile] radiantfracture on Instagram.
radiantfracture: a white rabbit swims underwater (water rabbit)
I’m now completely out of order on this art challenge, but I happen to have matched the day to the prompt today. This prompt is Oberon, king of the fairies.



He is painted a little more roughly, because that’s what I had the energy for, but I like him. And I like how his background kind of looks like malachite.

This painting also shows me experimenting with hot press paper, which takes up the gouache in a notably different way. The surface is very smooth, and painting on it with the gouache, which is already quite thick and springy, is almost like working clay. I think I like it, but it’s a brand new experience and the results, so matte and smooth, keep surprising me. Everything from before, on cold press, looks so rugged now.

The original photo reference is from [instagram.com profile] tarababylon; Photo shot by [instagram.com profile] iamgabrielagum; model [instagram.com profile] d.anthony_ in a very cool rug coat which I did not want to just copy, so I changed the design quite a lot – hop over there and have a look at the original.

I really have to thank [instagram.com profile] brettmanningart — This series has been so fun to paint.

{rf}
Page generated Jul. 17th, 2025 09:28 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios