Under the sea with Coralie: A hand-painted baby name
This little girl's mom is a sea turtle vet, and is sure to grow up adoring the ocean and the creatures that live there. It's already predicted in her beautiful name - CORAL(ie)!â
Coralie's mom requested a pink octopus, manta rays, seahorses, sea turtles, a reef shark, dolphins and coral (of course!). During the concept-phase of the process, I realised that the only requested sea creature that I wouldnât have space for is a whale shark.â BummerâŚ! But alas, there is only so much space to work with, and itâs often the Big Boys that are either just challenging to squeeze in, or would simply end up looking weird proportionately compared to the other featured creatures (this was exactly the case with Elliotâs SA-inspired baby name, where I had to leave out an elephant!).
With every commission for a hand-painted name, I prepare a rough pencil sketch for my client to approve before I start the actual painting. Once I touch paint to paper, it's very difficult to make alterations - watercolour is pretty unforgiving in this regard (although it's not impossible fix a watercolour boo-boo!)â . You can watch a walk-through of the concept sketch here.
I gave my client some time to look over the sketch and request alterations (in this case it was really just adjusting a few anatomical oddities, like the manta ray's face!). Then, it's time to jump into the painting!
I started with the "background" first -- basically the beautiful blue of the ocean.
I used my favourite lifting-technique to create movement in the water and add bubbles. Basically, I use a small, clean, wet brush and reactivate the paint that's already on the surface. The brush sucks up the paint, leaving bits that are lighter. This is super useful for teensy tiny white/light details. Instead of painting arooooound those areas (because white in watercolour is the paper, left clear -- watercolour is a transparent medium, so you can't paint white, unless you use a different medium like acrylics or gouache), you can just add them afterwards!
Above: All the blue is done! I still need to add a lot of bubbly details, but I'm ready to take a break from the blue and move on to the creatures!
I was thrilled with the idea of the pink octopus, so that's where I made my start (I also like working from left to right, so that I work 'over' the artwork as little as possible, if that makes sense). The brain coral next to it was also super fun to paint. I actually used a reference photo captured by my client, which is pretty cool!Â
Above: Here is another really cool example of what can be done with the lifting technique. I left the body of the jellyfish white (so the white you see is the white of the paper) and then created its fine tentacles by lifting the paint. The jellyfish is the hole in Coralie's "o". The negative space of this artwork was super important for the readability (as explained in the walk-through of the concept sketch) - the 'holes' in the "o", "a" and "e" had to be white (or very, very light) to contrast completely with the blue letters.
Above: The belly of the baby turtle is the hole in the "a"! Seen close up like this, it just forms part of the illustration. But seen from a distance, your eye immediately sees it as a letter "a".
Above: Making progress in Coralie's "e". I haven't tackled the delicate detail of the puffer fish yet, but it will become the hole in the "e"!
Done!!! Here you can really see how the white bits of the jellyfish, baby turtle and puffer fish ensure that the name is readable.
I love little details, like the heart-shaped bubbles created by the turtles, and the way the dolphin's tail pulled water up out of the letter to create the dot of the "i".
Happy face!!! Once safely packaged, Coralie travelled all the way to France to her new home (and her adorable little namesake). It was almost difficult to let her go... I grew quite attached and it was sooo fun to paint! But, I have no doubt that this artwork will be cherished for a long, long time to come!
I only accept a very limited number of commissions for name illustrations like these each year. Please contact me early to avoid disappointment!
