Watercolor, 12 x 9
I'm so happy to be back in the world of Anne of Green Gables, one of the most treasured classic stories ever to be told, and on today's post, as well as the first topic for February 2024, is going to be an all-new Anne of Green Gables watercolor fan art drawing. This is the fourth watercolor project I worked on for the first of the Anne stories by Canadian author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, done at 12 x 9. I haven't been doing any more of the fan art drawings nor any watercolor drawings of it, since the last time I shared you all one two years ago. It was a fall-themed watercolor drawing I illustrated from the sixteenth chapter from the book, titled Anne in Autumn, and later on, that became the 43rd Watercolor of the Month a year later for September. If you haven't seen it, feel free to check it out in the link.
This is illustrated directly from the twelfth chapter in Anne of Green Gables, during the scene when Anne Shirley first meets Diana Barry, who becomes her 'bosom friend', which is Anne's imaginative version of best friend. Marilla Cuthbert takes her to the Barrys' house, Orchard Slope, to let Anne meeting Diana. During their first meeting, Diana takes Anne outside to show her the garden, where Anne excitingly can look and pick out the flowers as much as she like. Of course, in the garden, Anne asks Diana to make a vow with her that they will be bosom friends forever:
Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at one another a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.
The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted Anne's heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths, nearly bordered with clam-shells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragment narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southern-wood and ribbon grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled (Chapter 12, Anne of Green Gables).
Not only this is the fourth watercolor fan art illustrated from Anne of Green Gables, but it also happens to be my third watercolor drawing focusing on Anne and Diana. I have shared a couple of ones I worked from the past, which you can find each one in the link, too. The first one I shared is Anne and Diana at the Island in 2020, and that was re-posted as the 17th Watercolor of the Month for July 2020, and the second drawing I did is Anne and Diana Getting Ready for Anne's Recital in the same year; it was illustrated from the thirty-third chapter in the book, where the girls, already sixteen, were getting ready for Anne's recital at the White Sands Hotel, and Diana was helping Anne putting on her pearl necklace.
Needless to say, this was such a fun Anne of Green Gables watercolor drawing I ever worked on. It was such a pleasure to go back and do another artwork to illustrate from the book, because it's such a classic. The idea came to me as another chance to try and work on another watercolor project, but change a different subject, after failing on working a watercolor drawing version of Twyla Tharp's ballet, Sinatra Suite, based on the digital drawing pieces I did from last year. It was a day before New Year's Eve, and then suddenly, a thought of Anne of Green Gables just came to me and allow me to think about on which scene would I like to illustrate, and once again, that's when another thought popped out of my head: Anne's first meeting with Diana.
This project took me nearly two weeks to work from start to finish, there was no rush at all, and I took plenty of my time. So, I hope you all will find the process of working on the artwork as fascinating as exploring the fields through Green Gables or strolling down in the town of Avonlea at Prince Edward Island, just like Anne has over the years.
👒 Anne and Diana at Garden Drawing 1 (Sketching & Cleaning Up the Artwork) 🌺
The first step of working the third Anne and Diana watercolor fan art from Anne of Green Gables was starting off with the light pencil sketching the entire drawing. I worked on the first process on a Saturday afternoon, the day before New Year's Eve, while sitting down on my bed in my bedroom. During that, I also used my own copy of the book to follow the plot of the garden scene from Chapter Nine, including looking at the images of the flowers, based on the descriptions of each flower Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote.
I finished the rest of the sketch nearly a week later, and later on, I begin cleaning up the outlines by tracing the sketchy pencil outlines with the sharpie ink pens. I used black for most of all of the outlines, while I also used different colors, such as red (Anne's hair and pink Scotch roses), orange (orange tiger lilies and daffodils), green (grass), violet blue (blue flowers), and purple (pink tiger lilies). Once the tracing for the clean-up drawing was finished, I took my eraser and erase all of the light pencil outlines, and then, tape around the four corners of the drawing to create a border.
👒 Anne and Diana at Garden Drawing 2 (Coloring & Painting the Drawing) 🌺
The next day later, I started working on the second part of the process, and it was getting the drawing in full color. The first thing I begin with was coloring Anne and Diana, the flowers, and the rest of the background with the set of watercolor pencils, before I can paint into a full watercolor paint.
Before painting the entire drawing, I wanted to begin with the color of black, using a black acrylic paint and wetting it down with water and turn it into a watercolor paint, so I can paint Diana's black hair, screen on the back door, and Anne's black boots. I do have a black watercolor pencil, but it has been shaven down so short that there was no way I would use it to color and paint, nor for adding shadows for both character and background. Whenever that was done, I can paint the rest of the locations for the drawing, until it was finished on Monday morning.
👒 Anne and Diana in Garden Drawing 3 (Adding Shading) 🌺
Now that Anne, Diana, and the garden background have been colored and painted, we can go on with the third part of the job: shading. Not just like regular shadows, but making the shading a very colorful one, but still adding a bit of dark color contrast. And also, adding more color, like making Anne's hair more reddish-orange, and more brown for the tree on the right.
You can see that there's shadows on the girls, the back view of the house, the flowers, and green shading for the grass. However, you don't see any more shadows on the porch, the grass from the garden, bushes, tree, nor the grass in the backyard, because I was planning to use black acrylic paint to paint the darker shadows in watercolor medium later on.
As we move on to the final process of working this project, I can finish off by painting very dark shadows with black acrylic paint and paint the color in watercolor medium. I painted shadows on the floor and bottom of the porch, the house, the grass from the garden and of course, I did paint bit of black on one of the flowers to darken the shading, the tree, and the grass.
I also did darken the shadows on the girls, just to get each shadow popped out. And finally, the drawing was finished on Friday, January 12th, 2024.
Even though I have shared you all the drawings that came mostly from Anne of Green Gables, I think it would be fun to do illustrated drawings from one of the sequels, such as Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, and the rest of the Anne stories. If there's a scene from one of the sequels you would like me to draw and illustrate, please let me know in the comment box.
But if there's any more scenes you would like to me to draw directly from Anne of Green Gables, which one? Once again, please share one in the comments!
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