Nighttime conversations

 

When the end of October is near the challenges (mostly on Facebook) are about ghosts, spooky things and so on. It took a long time (and some conversations with relatives) before I had the inspiration to paint this watercolour painting.

My daughter suggested a misty forest, I thought about a spider and its web and my mother added the idea of a black cat. All that combined would make a nice scene for me to paint. Most of this is completely imaginary, only for the cat I have used one of my own reference pictures. 

For the spider's web I have used a small white wax crayon, so the lines would resist the watercolour. Not all the wax lines did resist the watercolour though so in the end I added some lines a bit with small amounts of black paint. The result is suggesting the white lines are shimmering in a beam of moonlight. 

The black cat I was painted using a mix of black and a greyish blue colour as animal fur always has variations in its shade because of the light. That suggested beam of moonlight will also have touched the cat so I had to include that in my depiction of the cat.

I have enjoyed painting this little scene and I was happy to have experimented with wax resist again - there is a lot to learn with that technique.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this painting and its availability can all be found at my Tumblr blog.