Box Castle II

Painting the base colors proceeded using liquitex inks. First I did some wetwash gradients with a few colors as a kind of swatch to see what combination I would like the best. The winning swatch was this one:

That is, Dioxazine Violet for the lower parts transitioning into Quinacridone Magenta for the mid-values, and then Azo Yellow on the tops, to suggest a distant setting sun striking the raised areas.

I made a slightly dilute wash of each of these colors in a small jar apiece, then used my trusty mouth atomizer to make the gradient:

Greyscale buildings:

I worked yellow to purple and then back again until I was satisfied.

The roof shingles went on as simple brush lines of Sienna. I'll elaborate on them more at the drawing stage but for now just the suggestion of layers is sufficient.

Finally, I mixed a couple vibrant greens and yellow-greens to apply to one side of the lid, and to the bottoms of the storage boxes to suggest grassy or mossy surfaces. I also crudely painted a few small rectangles of chipboard as doors.

With all this dry, I could not help but put everything together to see what I could make with it.

 This was, I think, spring of 2021? Possibly 2022...who knows? Anyway, what followed over the course of years between then and now was the intermittent and highly time-intensive process of hand-illustrating the stonework and other surface textures in pen and ink. More on that next post.