Primavera Mother—Time-Lapse Painting Demo Video

A watercolor mixed-media illustration of a young mother gazing lovingly at her newborn baby. Her hair is filled with flowers and butterflies and a bumblebee hover around them. Art by Victoria K. Chapman.
Primavera Mother by Victoria K. Chapman

I was recently inspired by Mother’s Day, which just passed, and my experience as a mother myself to create a new painting. I was also inspired by the beautiful flowers that are now emerging in the spring. One morning, I visited our local New England Botanic Gardens at Tower Hill in Boylston, MA. I found so much joy in all of the amazing flowers and pollinators sipping up their nectar. I created a sketch from these two sources of inspirations while I was there. The next two days after, I created this new hand-painted illustration, “Primavera Mother” and then made this time-lapse painting demo video to share.

I set up a camera to run while I worked in order to create a time-lapsed video of the illustration process. I always find it so interesting to watch other artists and illustrators paint, draw, and work their craft. I know others enjoy this too. I hope you also enjoy this new video of the process to create “Primavera Mother”.

“Primavera Mother” was created using watercolors, gouache, gel pen, and colored pencils. It took approximately 15 hours to create from drawing sketches to finished painting. There were several hours of video footage to edit down and compress into 4 minutes, which was quite the challenge!

The music in the video is a song I wrote called “Love at First Sight”, which was originally written as a lullaby for my son when he was one year old. The lyrics are about how one loves their newborn baby so deeply and quickly even though they just met. It is the true “love at first sight”. You can hear more of my music at aquaence.com and aquaence.bandcamp.com/music.

If you’re interested in purchasing prints of “Primavera Mother”, you can find both 9×12″ matted prints and 5×7″ matted prints in my online art shop. If you’re interested in purchasing the original, please contact me.

Thanks for watching!

The World Needs Your Light

Recently, I was in a monthly meeting with a solopreneur career coaching group I’m in with Val Nelson. Val is an amazing coach who helps introverts and heart-centered people find their way as business owners or in new careers. Our conversations are not only about business, but also about matters of the heart and mind. In our August meeting, during our grounding meditation, I heard my own inner voice speak to me through my feelings of despair over the state of the world. It said, “The world needs your light”. In fact, the world needs all of our light.

Here I was feeling like the horse Artax in The Never-ending Story, and my own voice was Atreyu saying, “you’re letting the sadness of the swamps get to you”! But, in this version, I did not sink into the swamps of sadness. That inner voice told me to shine my light. That we all need to shine our light, now more than ever. Because when the world feels its darkest, the way out is through becoming a beacon of light and hope for yourself and others. I was inspired to create this new piece from the uplifting conversation with my group members that followed.

"The World Needs Your Light" original mixed media illustration by Victoria K. Chapman. A whimsical night sky shines with stars over the earth as a large ghostly tree reaches to the sky. In the tree is a child reaching up to the brightest star.

I’ve been wanting to create a sped-up video to show the creation of an entire art piece. This felt like a great time to try that out. This mixed-media illustration titled, The World Needs Your Light was created using watercolors, gauche, India ink, chalk pastel pencils, and iridescent medium, with digital finishing touches. The video shows the process of creating the traditional portions and is sped up 1700%. If only I actually worked this fast! The music playing over the video is an original song I wrote and recorded under my music project Aqueance titled, “Stay Tonight”. 

I hope you enjoy and keep shining your light!

Tutorial: How to Stretch Watercolor Paper

Watercolors are a lovely medium and it’s one of my favorites to work in. You can get some interesting layers of textures and colors because of its transparency. It has a great ability for being light and washy, and also deep and detailed. But, as many beginner artists find, working with watercolors can be challenging when your page gets wavy and warps while working on it. There are a few methods for holding your watercolor paper flat on your work surface. In this tutorial, I’ll show you my favorite way to keep watercolor paper flat while I’m working.

Tutorial I: How to Stretch Watercolor Paper

Here is the list of materials you’ll need for this method of stretching watercolor paper:

  • Preferred watecolor paper (sheets instead of blocks/pads preferred—I am using Fabriano 300lb Hot Pressed)
  • Light duty staple gun and staples
  • Metal edged ruler
  • Hollow wood (or lightweight) drawing board (here is one of the drawing boards I use, made by Helix)
  • Flat-head screwdriver
  • Source of water in a large sink/tub