Painting Emma by Jane Austen

It’s been a few months since I’ve painted a book. My last Story Map was Wuthering Heights, and now I’ve chosen another favorite by Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice has been one of my best sellers.

Below I’m breaking down exactly how I create my Story Maps in watercolor!

Sketch

Last week I showed you my sketch. It’s part list, part blueprint. While I read the book I make notes of landmarks I want to include. Some books have so many that I can only choose half of them. Some just have a handful, and I’m able to include them all.

 

As you can see I use shapes as placeholders for the buildings. Once I get the placement correct I can add more detail. I like to stay true to the book an even though I love the various Emma movies.

 

Drawing

This week I worked on pulling all of this information over to the final piece. I worked on spacing the buildings while making sure I had room for words and pretty skies and trees. 

You can see I end up changing a few things and I do a lot of erasing and redrawing towards the end to fine tune the piece as a whole. The last step to the drawing is to go over all my lines with a fineliner pen. And….the most satisfying part is to erase all the pencil marks!

If your curious about the supplies I use, visit My Watercolor Art Supplies page.

 

 

Painting

Now we get the reward of all this work! Painting!

I spend a lot of time getting the colors just right. I test them on scrap paper and blot them if they aren't just right.

 

 

I usually start with greenery and move on to skies and slowly build the painting up layer by layer.

 

 

 

 

Now to get into the details. I research old buildings and try to make each one a little different and how I imagined them while reading Emma.

Sometimes I push myself out of my love affair with green and blue. Lol. And I try to put in pinks, reds and yellows. In the end I often dull those down with layers of brown.

 

 

I meant to show you the entire finished piece this week....but I was deep into painting mode and forgot to take a final photo. This happens to most of my finished pieces. It takes a lot of concentration, time and thought to finish my watercolors.

My son dropped it off to be scanned at Chromatics in Nashville. When it's ready I will give you one last full peek before it is turned into art prints and tea towels!

 

Next week: The final reveal!

Click back here next week! (around June 16-17th)