From Idea to Finished Piece: ‘The Queen of the Nile’

All the way back in 2018, I started sketching the outlines of what would become my painting ‘The Nile Queen’. I had a fairly clear idea of the colour scheme from the start which is very unusual for me.  You can see from the initial sketch that I originally planned for there to be butterflies, and maybe a skull ala Hamlet in her hand. The necklace/collar also changed quite a bit between the original thumbnail and the final sketch. A lot of thought goes into pinning down the details of a sketch before I draft a larger version. How will the jewellery look? What about the background and the layout?

The next stage in the development process was hammering out the little details, and creating a more detailed rough sketch. This took some time and there were a few false starts. You can see the differences between the initial sketch and the rough draft below.

Each detail of the drawing was carefully planned: Instead of a generic water lily,  I chose the genus Nymphaea caerulea the blue lotus (or blue Egyptian lotus) which was sacred to the ancient Egyptians. For the stone relief carvings I referred directly back to examples from Ancient Egyptian art.

The clothing too was carefully though out. When trying to design the head wear for my queen, my starting point was the crown of Nefertiti, but it ended up looking cartoonish so I turned to the fabulous headwear of the women of modern Kenya and the crown of Queen Ramonda in Black Panther for inspiration. I took a bit of creative license too with the skirts and chest wraps (though the belt sash I did reference from my book the Chronicle of Western Costume). As for the collar necklace and bangles, thank you to museum catalogues, I couldn’t have done it without you.

 

The Final draft and Adding Colour

The majority of planning out the way, I dug out my watercolour paper and got stuck in, but even at this stage there were last minute changes between the thumbnail sketch and the final draft cough lillies and stone-work cough. 

Excuse my poor photography skills… it was late and the light was poor.

After much painstaking painting, and cursing about poor life decisions (damn you gold leaf) this is the finished product… for now. All that remains is doing something with the border, and then framing it. And possibly taking a better picture. Maybe…

If you fancy a closer look at the painting process, check out my Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/wee_red_vixen/