Fairy of Winter: An Intuitive Watercolor Painting Process

Hi everybody,

This time I would like to tell you a little more about the creative process behind my intuitive watercolor painting Fairy of Winter.

Fairy of Winter, Watercolors on Paper, Intuitive Painting, Rika Dehombreux, 2014

Perfectionism

In the winter of 2013–2014, we were still living in Germany. In previous years, the cold season had brought us quite a lot of snow, but that particular winter it stayed away. This gave me an idea for a painting: I would paint a winter fairy bringing snow.

Although I had been creating intuitive art for quite some time, I felt the pressure of perfectionism. This can be very limiting, especially with intuitive art, which encourages you to create freely and step away from consciously thinking about rules and how things should be done.

For me, intuitive art is about entering intuitive and subconscious realms and allowing them to surprise me with the unexpected.

That day, however, I felt confused and not quite in touch with my creative source. I wanted to plan the result carefully and be in control. I doubted my creative process and felt insecure.

Some planning

I decided to sit down, relax and free my mind, as I normally do before starting a piece. Very quickly, an image of a fairy came to me, and I began to sketch her intuitively on drawing paper.

I was very pleased with the result, but now I had her on a surface that wasn’t suitable for wet media such as watercolor. I could have colored her with colored pencils, but the initial idea had been to make a sketch as a plan for a painting. So I needed to transfer her onto watercolor paper.

I used a well-known transfer method to do this. I laid transparent paper over the sketch and traced the lines with an HB pencil. Then, because I wanted the fairy to remain in her original orientation rather than appear as a mirror image, I flipped the transparent paper and traced the lines on the other side, this time using a soft 6B pencil.

Next, I placed the 6B side face down on the heavy watercolor paper and went over the lines with a bone folder.

In total, I traced the same drawing three times!

It is a pity that I cannot show you the drawing on the transparent paper. I must have misplaced it during our move from Germany to Belgium because I have never been able to find it again.

"Fairy of Winter", Graphite Pencil on Paper, Intuitive Drawing, Rika Dehombreux, 2014

Creative Flow

After all that careful tracing, I was happy to shift back into my intuitive mode and begin painting the fairy.

I realized that, at least at that moment, planning art simply wasn’t my thing. I felt that the transfer process was competing with my creative flow. It wasn’t what I needed, and it wasn’t what made me happy.

Nevertheless, it was a valuable exercise because I could see how the technique might become useful someday. Perhaps an intuitive drawing I particularly love might need to be transferred onto another surface, for example.

I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to create art. What matters is that the process feels right for you, the creator. If careful planning helps you create, then that is what you should do.

As artists, I think we should avoid boxing ourselves in and remain open to different approaches and techniques. On that particular day, I felt that I needed the support of a plan. And in the end, experimenting with that different approach brought me back in touch with what felt most natural to me: creating intuitively.

It also gave me new possibilities to keep somewhere in the back of my mind for future artwork.

Fairy of Winter

Later that winter, we finally had some beautiful snowfall, and I thought again about the story of Fairy of Winter.

She remains quite a unique piece among my paintings because she was partially planned. Even so, something unexpected happened along the way. The face of the fairy in the finished watercolor painting is quite different from the face of the fairy in the original drawing.

That means the drawing could still become an artwork with a personality of its own. I am thinking of adding color to the original sketch one day, but this time in a purely intuitive way. I wonder where that would lead me.

That is still one of the things I enjoy most about intuitive art: the wonder of the unexpected and the feeling that an artwork can evolve in directions I could never have completely planned beforehand.

Have you ever felt that you needed to deviate from your usual creative process while making art? I would love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

Love,

Rika