Now, I know this painting is absolutely not seasonal. To be fair to me, I did start it in early August. I’ve been slowly working on it most mornings and some weekends since then, bar the whole month of September when I was mostly away. Even counting the fact that I didn’t touch it for a whole month, it’s still very slow. I wish I was a quicker painter/illustrator but I’m not. There’s a lot of time spent zooming out or stopping and looking at the piece, thinking about what should be done next but not actually doing it. In the case of this painting, since it’s my second gouache painting ever, that stopping was probably a procrastinating tactic because I was afraid that I would mess it up. Even though I could (and in fact did) paint over the mistakes, it scared me to commit brush to paper. There was also a lot of procrastinating looking at Instagram, but that’s just a general problem!
Naiades
I’m continuing my Friendship series with two friends by the pool. The inspiration comes from having lived in Montréal as a young adult: meeting friends at the public swimming pool after work and spending time there. We’d go in the water to cool down and come back to dry on our towels multiple times, and just generally hang out together. Didn’t have to always talk, some could just be basking in the sun while others were reading.
Giving the characters a personality
One thing that drives a lot of the decisions I make is the characters’ personalities. I wonder if that comes from when I played RPGs (role-playing games) as a teenager... Have I mentioned that I’m a nerd? Anyway, in an RPG you have a character sheet that helps you built the character you’re going to play: attributes (social, physical, mental); abilities (talents, skills, knowledge); etc. You get a limited amount of ‘points’ that you distribute between the various characteristics, based on how you imagine your character to be. This then informs how you’ll behave while playing. My friends and I would even write very extensive background stories for our players 🤓
For Naiades, I decided that one woman liked to be in the sun while the other preferred the shade (like me! ). And probably because some images from the 80s and 90s are still very much ingrained in me, it felt somewhat subversive to have the blond woman as the one hiding from the sun instead of wanting a tan.
I gave the white woman a short haircut and asymmetrically cut swimwear, imagining her as being more unconventional. The pink nail polish didn’t really fit with her personality, but a darker colour would have thrown off the colour balance. Sorry to betray you, imaginary lady!
The Latina woman in the sun is being sensible as you will notice from the SPF 50 sunscreen 😉. I imagined her as a very stylish person, but that’s somewhat hard to convey from the few elements you bring to a pool! I gave her bold sunglasses and a chic straw bag.
I thought about making them wear earrings, but would that make sense if they wanted to go in the chlorinated water? I decided they had taken them off. Another element I was humming and hawing about was the phone coming out of the bag. Should there be a message on it? Should it be left blank? In the end I chose to write something that’s not legible… Only because I can’t write that small! But in my head I know what it says: “J’arrive bientôt!” (On my way!) Another friend is coming to meet them.
The colours
I roughly plan the composition and colours before I start on any piece. I give myself leeway to change, add or remove elements as I go along.
One of the painted over mistakes I mentioned earlier was the shadow the parasol projects onto the ground. If you look at my digital colour study, I wanted the shadow to be blue. The colour palette was a little bit more limited and stylised. But when it came time to paint, the blue just looked wrong. I then tried to make it more yellow…which ended up looking green (basic colour theory, who would’ve known!) and therefore even more wrong. And so I had a third pass at it, this time with a dark yellow with a very subtle blue undertone. That’ll do pig, that’ll do.
The book
Although I have a whole collection based around actual books, I didn’t want this one to be a real one. Which meant I had to come up with an idea for a title and a cover. I thought back on my previous painting, Café Euphrosyne, and it became clear to me that the title should also be a Greek goddess! Or in this case a bunch of minor goddesses, as the Naiades were the nymphs of rivers, streams, lakes, marshes fountains and springs. Surely their protection could extend to swimming pools too, right? I also liked that they were nurses of the young and the protectors of girls, overseeing their safe passage from child to adult.
And thus, my book and my painting had a title.
Nobody has “perfect” skin (unless, of course, you’re a baby).
If you remember my last painting, you’ll know that I’d forgotten to add marks and moles on the characters. Not this time! I decided that showing so much skin was the perfect time to add stretchmarks. And let’s add some moles too. And the very pale woman should have freckles. When searching for reference photos, I found many where the freckles were not just contained to the nose and cheeks. Let’s embrace the freckles!
Objects
As usual, a lot of research went into finding every object and detail. I’m aware there’s no way for the viewer to ever know this (bar reading this newsletter), but most of the objects are from sustainable and ethical companies. It would be boring to enumerate them all, but I’ll mention this cute bag because it’s from a small business and I really like quilts at the moment:
There were probably other smaller decisions taken along the way, but these were the major ones!
Judith xx
Monthly inspiration
While painting this piece, I started to think maybe I was doing gouache wrong? I felt that most people use it to create flat colour, not semi-realistic skin like I do. But then I came across these:
Clearly, I can and should be using gouache as I please! For giving me permission to do so, Rebecca Caridad is my inspiration this month.
You can follow my illustration and graphic design work here.
You can visit my shop here.