Eights are leaders, self-confident, strong, and assertive. However, are protective of themselves and others around them, but resourceful and decisive. However, this can all lead to issues with becoming ego-centric and domineering. Plus, the need to control their environment including people and therefore can be seen and act confrontational and intimidating. They can also have issues with allowing themselves to be vulnerable and with their tempers. However they wish to use their strength to improve their own life and the lives of others and can become heroic, magnanimous and inspiring.
With this piece even though I roughly sketched out the girl, see below, I was mainly working with a digital mock-up. My sketches include very limited detail and just the bare minimum I would need when painting, as the sketches are ready to transfer to the watercolour paper.
With this image I didn’t need the lines, the needles or spikes as I could eyeball them in, plus I wanted to experiment with the tones, as I wanted stark contrast as the idea of the challenger and being dominant.
Here I was trying to find the balance of being protective but also strong and assertive. Therefore, I used this spikes as ones goings into her however there are ones going outwards as well, as if she is fighting back.
The texture in the background of this piece I absolutely love, I used a spray bottle and built up around 15 layers add more and more ink into the water with every layer, the texture is unique to this painting however still looked cohesive with the rest of the pieces.
This was one of the last pieces I painted and some of the elements in this piece were to tie in others and make the collection feel cohesive, and the texture was an important part of that.
The painting which inspired the feel, style, and the tone of this collection, see below, had this inverted image as the grass entered the hair and I wanted to honour that in this piece. I used Eight to do this as the lines are very similar to the grass in the image below.
I used red in this piece as it to me, not only colour psychology, represents quite a domineering personality, and anger and strength. The warmth in the tone of the black also worked well with this piece and I believe it would have felt a little cold when using a cold colour. I know sounds obvious however depending on the image and the colour depend on how the colour tinting the black works and gives the image, life in some pieces with the design, blue can give life and even warmth to the image, as it isn’t so flat, but also that coldness can extenuate something inside the image. This image I wanted to be warm, as the personality type at an extreme could be considered cold. However I wanted to find a balance and still have the image to be inviting even though some of the elements are quite harsh.
The black flat graphic hair is also one of my favourite elements, however unlike Nine, which had flat tone and no detail, this hair is still full of detail and the juxtaposition, and even though it is a single tone, the mind can fill in the detail and no more was needed than that. This was done in this specific piece to tie in the hair of Four and Nine, and bring the flat colour in but using detail to tie into the other pieces. I think this was sucessful.
Even though I like the spikes I believe I should have gone thinner and more delicate, as they seem a bit bulky in places. Also I found it really difficult to do the invert image in the hair accurately when the hair was so detailed, and could pull of the elegance I wanted or wished I could have achieved. Even though I planned this piece out, I forgot to think about this detail and I think if I planned more thoroughly I could have achieved the result I was looking for.