Artist Methods

My personal belief of Lady Gaga is that she is much like a robot or some other creature with endless energy and conviction, since she is constantly on tour and always wearing a new outrageous outfit. To express this view I hold of her, I decided to depict Lady Gaga as the Energizer Bunny, since she seems to be made of the same endless energy.

A restriction placed upon me for this assignment was that I had to use watercolour as the only medium, and I was encouraged to experiment with washes. Washes can be fun to play with, and I like to often make some and scan them for future use as textures that can be added to digital drawings.

To start a brief explanation on how I prepare my watercolour paper, I use one of my drawing boards to tape down a piece of cold press paper with masking tape. Then I use a clean brush, preferably larger sized, to sweep brushstrokes of clean water across the paper, making sure I thoroughly saturate the surface of the paper. Then I either leave the paper on the board to dry, or if I am feeling impatient and short on time, I'll use my hairdryer to quickly dry the paper within 5 minutes. Even though the paper is taped securely to the board, the paper will still be bulging, buckling, or puckering because it is absorbing all the water. However, as the paper dries, the page goes flat again. After you get through that, the paper is prepared for painting.

Note 1: Ideally one should completely soak their watercolour paper by immersing it in a bath of water and then securing down to dry, but I have altered and simplified my method in order to preserve the surface of my drawing board and keep my supplies affordable.

Note 2: There are two types of watercolour paper: hot press and cold press. Hot press has a smooth, flat surface, while cold press paper has a texture to it. I tend to prefer working with cold press, because I personally enjoy the texture. However, I have seen my peers do amazing pieces on hot press as well, so both are excellent.

Artist Methods Used

1. Draw thumbnails of image layout/composition. They're important. I save myself from wasting time later on in the process by fixing mistakes and poor composition early on.

2. Draw concept sketch. It can start rough, but I perfect it by the end, so that I have planned exactly what I will be painting for the final rendering.

3. Prepare materials. Secure and stretch watercolour paper by taping it to a stiff board and then saturate the surface with clean water. Allow the page to soak in the water, this is how you are stretching it. The page will dry completely flat if it remains secured to the board with tape.

4. Transfer sketch onto watercolour paper. Cover the back of the concept sketch page with a layer of graphite or charcoal, then lay that page, charcoal side down, onto the watercolour paper. Trace the outline and details of the image. Remove page and the outline will be transferred to the watercolour paper successfully. Fill in sketch a bit with pencil and clean up unnecessary smudges of charcoal.

5. Begin painting the subject.

6. Fine-tune details and correct mistakes where possible.

7. Use a scalpel blade to remove the subject from the page. This is specific to my intentions for this piece. I want to lay the painted subject over a background of watercolour washes. It will look cleaner this way than if I attempted to do a wash on the same page as the subject of this painting.
8. Create other watercolour pages that are washes and paint experiments. I repeat the process of stretching the pages and securing them down. Then I paint washes of watercolour in layers and use different colours. To create a splotchy effect, I drip clean water onto the page while it is drying.

9. Cut up experiments to be used as a background. I carefully plan out how I want to place the experiment pieces as a border and background under the subject.

10. Measure and prepare a precise frame on a board to mount project to. My teacher has strict guidelines of how we present our pieces, so it was important that I carefully cut and measure the illustration board I used for mounting everything to.

11. Glue down all pieces of background and main subject to project board.

12. Quality check and any last details. Here I cleaned up areas where glue had escaped or smeared and added more glue to pieces that were being difficult in gluing down. I also noticed I had forgotten to paint in the subject's lips, so I completed that. Then I decided the entire thing needed one more detail to give it added visual interest, so I grabbed a pen and drew in the action lines over the drum.

Et voilá! The finished look of this assignment, before I had to rush off to school.