Roses by Kelsey Hamersley. Ink and watercolor. June 2013.

I used a brush to do the ink work, but did the color in watercolor. I noticed while working on this how much more confident I’ve grown in watercolors—I think all the painting I’ve been doing for East of the Sun lately (little of which I’ve posted) has helped.

On a side note, I saw this painting by Beatrix Potter on Pinterest a while back and it made me realize how pathetic I am. :) Humbling and inspiring. I kept thinking about it while I was painting (though obviously the visual wasn’t good since it’d been weeks since I last saw it).

Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of carnations’. Image via

By Kelsey Hamersley. Colored inks, using a brush. April 2013.

Another shot at inks after my pineapple, also from April. I went for a different, more sensitive approach this time, doing minimal line work with the flowers, and forgoing the black ink altogether, as opposed to the pineapple where the black ink work pretty much holds the whole thing together.

By Kelsey Hamersley. Watercolor. May 2013.

This is a little painting—3.4” x 5.5”. Just a doodle, attempting to capture a picture in my head. I can’t say I was entirely successful, but it’s getting closer.

Character sketch, 2012

East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Kelsey Hamersley. Pencil. March 2013.

“When she awoke in the morning both the Prince and the castle were gone, and she was lying on a small green patch in the midst of a dark, thick wood. By her side lay the self-same bundle of rags which she had brought with her from her own home. So when she had rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and wept till she was weary, she set out on her way…”

I posted a study for this sketch earlier…Kind of fun seeing how the composition developed. I changed Lassie’s pose a fair bit and made her smaller—it just helps contribute to the loneliness which is a big part of the mood in this stage of the story. After doing a lot of experimenting with different inks, I’m leaning towards simply doing watercolors for the finals. The ink color I liked best was supposedly waterproof, but would bleed whenever it got wet, so I would have had to put all the watercolor painting in before I got to the pen work. And knowing how easy it is to get drips or mistakes that you can’t take back with pen work…I’d rather save myself the stress! :P

By Kelsey Hamersley. Sharpie and watercolor. April 2013.

By Kelsey Hamersley. Painted with colored inks, using a brush. April 2013.

I decided to experiment with inks a little, since I haven’t used them much in washes and have, for the most part, stuck with dip pens. I didn’t mix the inks at all before painting, just added layers of washes (in yellow, red, violet, blue, and green) and some brushed line work in black. Consequently, there are a lot of colors in there! It is cool, though, because standing further away from the drawing, they blend together into more recognizably “pineapple” colors.