Light in the Darkness
For Qinni. May she Rest In Peace. ____
I'm sure many of you have heard the news by now, but in case you haven't: Qinni passed away on February 8th, after years of struggle with a heart condition and a relatively new cancer diagnosis. The first tweet I saw saying she'd passed...I thought it was a mistake or some kind of sick joke. She'd said in recent updates she was estimated to have a year, year and a half. That was one of my first thoughts, She was supposed to have another year. But, sadly, it wasn't a mistake. And soon, everywhere online was alight with those of us that had been touched in some way by Qinni's work. She is gone, but she is not forgotten. I never knew Qinni personally, but she was one of the first really popular artists I found myself drawn to here on dA. And a lot of my artistic style circa 2016 was influenced by her work, though I don't think I realized it at the time. This includes the artwork I would go on to make into the wallpaper I use for my banners all over social media. And thus, it only made sense to use that piece as a reference for this tribute piece. A piece that I had to drop everything to make, despite whatever else I had planned. I also decided to draw on an idea I'd been thinking about for a while; the original idea being a mermaid wearing a space helmet, but the helmet is also a fishbowl. I didn't include the mermaid part here, as I mainly wanted to focus on space and star themes since those are elements that Qinni's art is really known for. (Although, after having spent some time going through her gallery and social media posts, it seems the Little Mermaid was a subject she frequented too, so it still would've worked, I think.) I started with a sketch, using My Fantasy, My Insanity for a reference for the face as I mentioned, and some graphics from pixabay.com for the helmet. I did modify the hair to be more like Qinni's, made the eyes match, and turned the previously neutral mouth into more of a smile, but other than that the basic lines are largely the same. At some point, though I'm not really sure where the idea came from, I had the idea to do the whole sketch of the face out like a constellation. (My original plan had been to just have a galaxy in the blank space between the face and the helmet or just do the hair that way.) This is something I'd never tried doing before, so I stopped and did a couple of test pieces to see if what I wanted to do would be possible traditionally. I knew it would be digitally, but I wanted to stick largely to a traditional piece since Qinni became known for her watercolor work. Fortunately, those test pieces turned out really nicely, aside from me discovering watercolor paper was my better bet over mixed media for the gradient effects I wanted (which in hindsight I really should've seen coming, but this is why I did separate tests in the first place). And I will be posting these test pieces at a later time since they did work out well, talking more about how I figured out the process I'm about to go over as relates to each of those. With those tests done, I was finally able to start on the actual artwork. (Although I did stop a few more times as I went to do other tests.) I started by scanning the sketch in and booting it into Paint Tool Sai to break it down into the more simple lines and spaces I'd need, like making a connect-the-dots puzzle in reverse. First I just went over the sketch with connected (but straight) lines, making corners at curves, and then I made a new layer and broke those lines down a bit farther, leaving dedicated spaces at certain corners and where lines intersected for stars later. Then I printed off the lines and, after inking the helmet onto watercolor paper (including the ink-technique shading), used my lightbox and a ruler to carefully trace the face lines into the helmet. I taped down the edges of the paper, covered the shine spots on the helmet near the face space just to be on the safe side, and then got to work with painting. It may not look like much, but I spent a long time going back and forth with the paint to get the blending and colors right. I wanted just the right amount of pink, just the right amount of blue. A little dark over here, but lighter over there. Lots of blending and lifting involved. As is typical of me, I'd put paint on, blend it out, then put more on and start the cycle again. But eventually, I found the right balance and got something I was happy with. (And fortunately, I was smart enough to use some of my 100% cotton watercolor paper to make this process easier; it would not have blended this nicely over this large of an area if I'd used anything else.) That had to dry overnight since by the time I finished with it, it was approaching 4 in the a.m. and I was exhausted. The next day, I used a ruler and a white gel pen to go back over the constellation lines and make the notable stars (dots) attached to/connecting them. As well as I used a yellow Gelly Roll moonlight pen to place yellow stars in certain places, a specific nod to the stars in many of Qinni's artworks. After I'd given the gel pen a few minutes to dry, I pulled out the white gouache and got busy splattering to really bring home the galaxy look. And then after that, I went in with some PanPastel to give the lines a glow so they'd pop a little more. It was good, but even after I filled in the two top elements on the helmet to be black to balance a little better (they'd just been cross-hatched before), it still wasn't quite what I wanted. I'd known for a while I was going to be taking out the extra white of the paper background in Photoshop, so I decided if I had time (it was a busy few days surrounding this artwork's creation) I would try fixing the yellow stars in Photoshop and maybe a few other experiments to finalize it. This turned out to be a good thing, as just as I was finishing up the now-digital stars, I realized I'd completely forgotten one of the main elements I'd wanted to include: The fish! And to be honest, I'm still not sure how that happened. They just totally slipped my mind during the initial planning and testing phases. But since I was already there, it wasn't too hard to pull up some of Qinni's artwork as a reference and draw a few fish in digitally, then turn down the opacity a little so the orange wouldn't be too overbearing. And that worked out, as originally the piece had still felt kind of empty somehow. The fishies fill in some of the more bare spots pretty nicely. There are a million other little ideas or tweaks I could do if I went back in and gave myself more time, but it's already more than what I had imagined. And I can fiddle with it all I want, but all the art in the whole world that I could ever make will never fully express my gratitude towards Qinni and my sorrow that she's gone. That one of the brightest lights in the art community has moved from earth to the stars. Qinni's work reminds me of one of my favorite poems by FridgePoetProject (another wonderful artist that passed away all too soon), The Daily Magnet #106, which reads, "You write love into my eyes with starry ink." Although, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say she painted it into our hearts with starry watercolor. Rest In Peace, Qinni. <3 ____ Artwork (c) me, MysticSparkleWings
