Finished artwork: Celtic Facets
Created on hot pressed paper, 270gsm, 27cm x 35.5cm
After 6 months, I’m pleased to say that my ‘Celtic Facets’ artwork is now completed and I’m very pleased with the result.
This artwork originally began life in February of this year, when I took an online course with geometric artist, Clarissa Grandi, which I really enjoyed and learned a lot from. I wanted to incorporate my Celtic knotwork into some of the geometric forms that we learned, and I soon started on this piece created from a double seed of life construction.
Once I constructed the double seed of life base, I then drew 72 individual Celtic knots, one into each segment. If you look closely, I drew each knot so that it was the mirror image of its neighbour.
Once these were all drawn out and outlined, I then worked in Derwent Graphitint pencils, shades 10 Meadow and 11 Ivy, into alternate rounds, to create a base layer in each of the six different rounds of knots.
After this stage, I got stuck. I wanted more variety in the colours for the next layer, and wasn’t pleased with any of the experiments I tried. Then I saw my friend Emma using Kuretake Gansai Tambi Graphite Watercolours, and that was it, I knew these were what I needed to complete the piece! An order was made, the paints arrived, and I got swatching using the paints on top of the two colours of Graphitint pencils I had used, and finally came up with a colour combination that I was pleased with. The piece could move on!
After that it was just a question of working on the piece in between workshop preparation and teaching. The different layers of the Gansai Tambi paints went down, one round each of 230 Graphite Red, 240 Graphite Yellow, 250 Graphite Green, 260 Graphite Blue, 261 Graphite Violet and 270 Graphite Brown.
Then each individual knot was coloured and shaded with both of the Graphitint pencils again. Once the piece itself was completed, I added a background using Derwent Inktense 1700 Mustard and 1720 Tan.
I’m really pleased with the final piece, and I’ve put in a request to my other half to make me a suitable frame to go with it, so fingers crossed that won’t be another 6 months 😁
