Reading-based art

I just finished reading a book called The Marsh King's Daughter, by Karen Dionne. Although the story itself isn't based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, the author uses it as a sort of running metaphor and opens each paragraph of the book with a further excerpt until you come to the end of the fairy tale and the real story both in the last chapter.

After writing a book review last night (publishing Sunday), I woke up this morning with an idea for artwork to go with the story, and spent most of the day playing around with it. The fairy tale features a child who is beautiful by day but with a horrid disposition, and then when night falls she turns into a huge ugly frog with a sweet, affectionate manner and sorrowful eyes. Her adoptive mother (the stork brought her) must keep her secret night-time identity from her Viking husband, who she believes would kill the child if he knew; the mother wouldn't mourn the loss of the child so much as she would the frog, since it is the frog with whom she has bonded. (There's more to it, but that's the opening premise.)

I tried to accomplish something in this illustration that didn't quite come off: I wanted the frog to be completely present in the foreground, and for the girl and the background of the marsh to be ethereal and not quite so real seeming. I tried to achieve it by putting a water-like wash of blue over the girl and background, which helped. but I went too dark for some of it to drop back. I thought using indigo for her shirt would make the frog pop, but instead I think it made her too tangible.

She's also a little more generic looking than I intended, and her left eye seems to be wandering off her face a bit. I guess a fish-eyed look for a girl who spends her nights as a frog is okay!

I got a shipment from Dick Blick today, and one item in the box was "Semi-Moist Metallic Watercolor" (sorry, Kirsti) in gold. (I also ordered bronze and pink.) I couldn't wait to use it, so I highlighted her hair, the cat-tails, and parts of the frog with it. It doesn't show up so much while wet, but once it dries it really pops, so I should have been less enthusiastic about splashing it around, especially on the background elements. But hey—experiment and learn.

Here's my illustration—"The Marsh King's Daughter"—Pencil, Daler Rowney Inks, watercolors, Micron pen, white gel pen, gold paint, on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, approximately 7x11 inches. You can see it again on my book review blog, https://bookadept.com/blog, on Sunday morning.