Okay, okay, another elemental mouse. With gingko leaf. I miss those trees...But this still doesn't constitute a commitment to a series! I promise nothing! Nothing! ARRRGHH!

Ahem.

This was kind of tough. Not in actual painting, which was the standard watercolor/colored pencil/acrylic ink, but getting the colors to hang together.... I originally had planned to do something very like the fire mouse, but I immediately ran into snags--the sort of gritty, textured earth with dark shadows look in the background just didn't work for the light and airy element of air. So I had to start over and go really light, sort of cloudy. And unfortunately that ran into another snag--I wanted to use yellow, but yellow wash background, yellow cloth, tan mouse, gold metal doodads...it was starting to look very washed out, and lacked the crispness that I'm sort of psychotic about. Even purple shadows didn't quite pull it out. So I wound up inking bits here and there in a medium brown, and that helped quite a lot, and before I quite knew it, I'd gone and inked most of it, and between the heavily stylized smoke and the harder outlines, it had turned Art Nouveau on me. Back in the day, I used to do a LOT of Art Nouveau styled digital work, but I've never really tried it with real media because...um....I'm scared. (FEAR! FEAR! Geometry SCARY!) But I do love Art Nouveau dearly, so I figured hey, what the hell, added the curly twisty bit down on the left, and called it good.

Having broken even that teeny little wall, I find myself itching to do more Art Nouveau (or at least the less frightning elements--those elaborate frames would probably overwhelm me, alas) in real media. As usual, my crazed muse outpaces my schedule...

Anyway! Mixed media, 9 x 12 on hotpress watercolor block. Original is for sale, prints are available, drop a note or visit [link] for details!