2D Project: Ego Research & Process

I knew I wanted to use water colour right from the start, but to be honest, I only started using this medium earlier this year so  I am still pretty new to it. Mimi suggested Iraville as a visual reference and since I was familiar with her style too, I decided to go ahead with it.

These were some key takeaways that I took from Iraville:

  • Her use of warm, earthy hues. Almost every colour had a tinge of warmness to it
  • Her strong use of shadows adds depth the composition
  • Her method of painting human skin (I never painted skin with water colour before!!)

Iraville was a visual reference for my water colouring technique. On the other hand, I had another artist that was my content reference.

Ah Guo is a local water colourist that I chanced upon this year, and his manipulation of local landscapes to something dreamlike and surreal was the biggest source of inspiration for my body of works. His use of familiar landscapes motivated me to apply them in the frames for my imagined outcome.

Hence, combining Iraville’s water colouring technique together with the visual content of Ah Guo became the direction I was heading towards for my “Ego” project.