This is part 4 of a series, Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 if you want additional context. Otherwise, another week in on this mixed-media piece for a friend who commissioned me. My friend is a lawyer, and imagining the myriad of emotions she's had to endure throughout law school and early years starting out with her own practice.
This installment we will look at some of the right side of the painting and it's different elements with ink and watercolor. I had been considering Angel Attorney's recently loss of her mother and shortly before that--her grandmother. There had been a nagging sensation for to include pink threads in the scales of justice, a symbol to invoke a reminder of her grandmother. Numerous qualities that make up the sense of justice and fearlessness of our Angel Attorney can be traced through her mother and grandmother. They needed a place, but I still needed to work out some of the finer points.
Last time we left off with inking the feathers, and I just kept going there because it allowed me time to consider the person in the lower right corner.
I typically do pencils first, followed by fine ink. Inks used were Sakura Pigma Micron pens, nibs 03 (0.35 mm) and 005 (0.20 mm). I then erase the pencil lines leaving the ink--but not all pens are the same. Some ink can't withstand eraser contact and have a tendency to smear or bleed when wet. These pens are a little more expensive, but they are one of the only pens I trust to hold against erasure and moisture. To help convey that the Angel Attorney is closer to the viewer than the other figures, I wanted to get a thicker ink outline, using a Sakura brush tip. I love using the Pentel brush pen for most of my watercolor paintings but I use it after finishing the watercolor layer. Unfortunately, if used at this stage in the painting it wouldn't hold up with erasures and wet media very well.
In the early design stages, I had been unsure of how/who to depict as the Angel Attorney's client on the right side of the courtroom. In an earlier stage I made a commitment to the facial features of this person, but not the rest of the body. This painting warrants special consideration for such an important part of the piece. It needs to represent the best kind of client that a lawyer can believe in and want to fight for. Someone worthy of a strong defense and a cunning offense. Someone who would never purposefully hurt others, with a unique sense of family and love. Someone who recently moved on from this world, but could have a likeness here. If only this Angel could go back in time and defend her kind and caring mother from pains of the past. I hadn't realized it, but at some point it hit me--this woman looks like a younger version of the Angel Attorney's mom.
Angel Mom was an incredibly caring, warm, and free-loving teacher and parent. In the late 1990's Angel Mom had been experiencing difficulties with her memory and bodily functions. After an alarming car trip, Angel Mom had begun to seek medial help and was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. By the mid-00's she had become wheelchair bound and a short time later had needed around the clock care with assisted living. It felt right for her to find her place on this painting as she is exactly the kind of representation of the type of person Angel Attorney would give her all to defend.
Thanks for checking out the latest, one or two more stages and I think I may be close to getting this one done!