Watercolor, 9 x 12
As much as I have been doing drawings and artwork pieces of any ballet in digital drawing medium, thanks to the magic of using Autodesk SketchBook, I haven't been doing any of my ballet drawings painted in watercolor, and so today, it's finally here in this new post at The Autistic Animator's Desk. It has been quite a while since the last time I worked on a watercolor drawing of any ballets, and I can't remember what was the last one I did.
Not only this is a very new ballet watercolor artwork, but this is my very first artwork to illustrate a ballet from the Balanchine repertoire, and it's called Mozartiana.
Mozartiana is a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine for New York City Ballet, set with the music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky from the piece Suite No. 4, Mozartiana, Op. 61 (1887). Balanchine choreographed this ballet for the Tchaikovsky Festival, which premiered at the New York State Theater in 1981. The original cast were Suzanne Farrell, Ib Anderson, and Christopher d' Amboise. It features one ballerina, one male principal dancer, and one male soloist, along with four women and four little girls in the corps de ballet.
It was considered to be Balanchine's last work before his passing two years later in 1983.
In my experience, I've heard of this ballet before, and yet, this one is very interesting. My first time seeing it was from watching a full YouTube clip of the performance that was broadcast for PBS in 1984, and I think it was a special program for a tribute to George Balanchine one year after he died. It featured both Farrell and Anderson dancing as their lead roles, but also Victor Castelli as the male soloist. An interesting fact was Castelli was originally going to dance as the soloist role at the very beginning of the production, but he injured himself and couldn't do it, and that's when they brought Christopher d' Amboise, the son of the legendary NYCB principal dancer, Jacques d' Amboise. So, I watched it on a Tuesday afternoon in late-June, and thought it was pretty good. As said, I thought it was an interesting ballet, it was beautiful, and elegant. So, that's what led me got interested in doing an art project on it, and I think this would be great to see it in an animated form.
The drawing of Balanchine's Mozartiana illustrates the first section of the ballet called Preghiera, or known as Prayer, and it opens with the principal ballerina surrounded by four little girls.
Even though I didn't add the little girls in the drawing, I only wanted to show the ballerina for this project, and I drew this pose after former NYCB principal dancer Sterling Hyltin. I remember seeing an image of Hyltin dancing in Mozartiana from one page in Canton Ballet's programs on the night seeing their production of The Nutcracker, and she came as a guest artist to dance as the Sugar Plum Fairy. I have collected the programs from when I was young. I didn't know anything about New York City Ballet nor Mozartiana at that time, for I was eighteen or nineteen, when I first saw Hyltin dancing on stage for the first time. Now, after watching Mozartiana for the first time and wanting to do a watercolor drawing project, I thought it would be great to draw the pose after Hyltin, but not designing the character after her.
I started working on this project within the very next day. To learn the history behind the ballet, I listen to the full episode from New York City Ballet's podcast called City Ballet the Podcast, in the section Hear the Dance, hosted by Silas Farley. It's the fifty-first episode on the podcast, and that's where you'll get the insights of Mozartiana. If you are a ballet fan and wanted to learn about New York City Ballet, please go check out the podcast, and you can find the full episode on Mozartiana in the link at the end of this post.
Mozartiana Ballerina Drawing 1 (Sketching & Cleaning Up)
The first thing to do is starting the project with the light rough sketch in pencil. Before sketching the principal ballerina, as well as designing her for the first time, research was the important step. If you're going to do a character design of one of the lead dancers from any ballet, you have to look at the pictures to learn what the costumes look like, how they wear their hair up or down, settings, and the choreography. As I already mentioned, I drew the pose after Sterling Hyltin from a picture on Google, and I also used an image of former NYCB principal Maria Korwoski dancing with her partner in this ballet for reference, just for like close ups for drawing the costume.
After designing and light sketching, I took the black ink pen and traced the light pencil outlines to clean up the drawing. Once that's finished, I erase around the drawing to get rid of the light pencil outlines, so I can start the coloring process before painting.
Mozartiana Ballerina Drawing 2 (Coloring Process)
Next up was getting the drawing in color with the set of watercolor pencils, just before I can paint it in watercolor medium. I first started with coloring the lead ballerina, but the only thing I didn't colored was the top of her costume in black. That was saved for the painting process, because I'll be painting the top with my black acrylic paint, since my black watercolor pencil is way too tiny to use.
When coloring the ballerina was done, I can color the background, using mixture of purple and dark brown, but later on I would paint it with gray (with black acrylic paint) to create like a smoky dark purple color, which it'll be a similar match to the skirt on the bottom of the costume. The plan was having the top painted in a dark contrast and paint the bottom in a light contrast.
Mozartiana Ballerina Drawing 3 (Painting Process & Complete)
The drawing is colored, and it was time to paint! 🎨🖌
I actually started painting the background first, and using wet black acrylic paint, I can paint the purple/dark brown mix into a nice, beautiful smoky dark purple background, from dark contrast on top to light contrast on the bottom. Whenever painting the background was finished, I can paint the lead ballerina in watercolor, including painting the top of her costume in black, thanks to the black acrylic paint in watercolor medium.
But wait, we're not done yet! The only thing I have to finish it up was adding shadows. I went back to the watercolor pencils to color the shadows on the ballerina from her hair, skin, and her legs, and also on the floor, where she stands en pointe. After adding shadows with the pencils, I can paint it in watercolor medium. The shadow on the bottom was painted with wet black acrylic paint to create a light shadow painted in gray. Once the project was finished, with blow drying to get the paint dried up, I can remove four strips of tape, and sign my name signature on the bottom right.
The first Mozartiana artwork was finished on June 26th, 2024. Interesting fact is that this was from start to finish in one day, so it didn't take me long to work and finish it.
I hope you all enjoyed learning the process of my time working on the first Mozartiana ballet artwork. So, after working on this project, I end up working on doing more character designs on this ballet, because I'm thinking about doing a future project for a Mozartiana artwork pieces and share it sometime this fall. The character designs are drawn in digital drawing on Autodesk SketchBook, so whenever they're finished, I'll be sharing them on social media, and then, let you all know whenever it's posted here on this blog as an upcoming post.
So next week, coming up on Wednesday, August 7th, I'm going to be sharing you all few finished and unfinished drawing pieces of the upcoming final and part four of The Elephant Man story illustrations for a sneak peek. If you don't want to miss it, please feel free to become a subscriber, and you can follow me on Instagram, Discord, and Facebook for any latest of new projects and reading posts.
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