Small World – a new watercolour and ink illustration

Once I had a basic idea of what I wanted, I drew a thumbnail sketch.

The initial thumbnail sketch

The thumbnail in this case (shown left) is no bigger than a postcard. Usually thumbnails are much smaller, but I like mine a bit bigger as I like to noddle around and add small details, such as the little fish leaping from the pond.

After I had drawn the thumbnail I looked at it and thought that the bottom half was pretty unnecessary, hence the line through the middle.

The thumbnail, inked and coloured using watercolour pencils

Next I grabbed some watercolour pencils and began scribbling in some colour. I largely ignored the bottom half of the page since I wasn’t going to use it. But then a happy accident occured. I stepped back, looked, and quite liked how the colour was fading out towards the bottom, so I left it at that and began inking the outline.

For inking, I went old fashioned style and used a dip pen with a bottle of ink. I inked the house, greenery and other bits but purposely ignored most of the bottom half making it look like the colour, and outlines, are fading away in the bottom half. This I liked.

But that was only the thumbnail. Now to do it properly!

I got a piece of watercolour paper, about A4 size, and redrew my thumbnail sketch very lightly in pencil. Next I applied blue watercolour to the sky area (leaving the sun untouched) then turned the paper 180′ and did the bottom ‘sky’ in a more grey-blue. When both skies were dry I began colouring the other bits and bobs.

The first pass of watercolour on Small World

A detailed section of the (soon-to-be) final version

One thing I’ve learned with watercolour (through a lot of trial and error) is that a single wash is usually never enough. So now it’s time to do it all again. Minus the skies.

I apply a second coat of paint to all the detailed parts of the painting then, once all that’s dry,  add some more shading to the side of the house, chimney and so on.

The second pass makes all the difference to the colouring!

A detailed section of the second pass, showing shading to windows and the little wheelie bin.

And, again, time to let it all dry.

Once it dried it was time to do the dip-pen and ink outlines. That’s just a case of drawing squiggles around the greenery, not outlining the smoke from the chimney, but putting a few strokes for shading here and there. Same with the pathway, which I purposely omitted the crazy paving idea I had in the thumbnail as I thought it’d make the path look too busy and draw the viewer away from the house and trees. All that’s left is to show you the final version:

The final 'Small World' illustration.

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The idea for this illustration came from seeing the painting ‘Mala Locus‘ by Nikki Morris, look her up on Facebook or Twitter. Tell her Ronnie sent you