Jasmin Becket Griffith Butterflies Painting Tutorial

Absinthe Butterflies Painting Tutorial by Jasmine Becket-Griffith

Published in 2014 by Jasmine Becket-Griffith www.strangeling.com Jasmine Becket-Griffith PO BOX 470932 Celebration, FL 34747-0932 All content ©Jasmine Becket-Griffith All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording, hand copying, or otherwise without prior express written permission of the copyright owner. This book is intended as a painting tutorial for personal use only, not for public instruction or commercial use. Creation of derivative works, displays, publishing, re-distribution, copies or modification of any of the contents of this book is strictly prohibited.

ISBN: 978-1-312-19930-9

A Note from Jasmine

This publication was created in response to all of my fans and collectors who over the years have wanted further insight into my techniques and process of painting. It is simply a series of photographs documenting the creation of one of my original pieces, “Absinthe Butterflies.” Throughout the duration of this painting, I took photographs of the piece in progress, and took the time to write a short paragraph describing what exactly I’m doing in each photo. Portions of this publication also appear in the Italian cake/painting tutorial book “Jasmine and Molly.”

I am not a teacher, I am not a writer, this should not be taken as any sort of “professional” instruction – it is simply a step-by-step description from me covering how I created this painting. Nearly all of my paintings are created using a similar methodology, and I like to think it could be helpful for painters and artists of all kinds. I myself always enjoy watching other artists in the creation process, and hope that you enjoy watching mine. The goal of this book isn’t to encourage the public just to paint copies of my paintings or characters (please note the copyright disclaimer at the front of this publication) but rather to share my basic process and handling of acrylic paints, thoughts on composition and chronological decisions, which could be of use to artists working in any genre of painting.

For those of you online, I post work-in-progress photos almost daily when I am working on new paintings here at home. If you would like to see progress photos of new works, please follow me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/strangeling or on Instagram under the name Strangeling and visit my website http://www.strangeling.com

The most exciting part of the painting for me - the beginning! At this point the painting has so many options, so many ways it may turn out. I usually have some sort of idea in the beginning of what I'd like the painting to look like, but I mostly like a piece to evolve naturally. Right now I am preparing the board. This is a masonite panel that I cut to 16"x20" with a saw. Masonite is a wood composite panel that is great for painting on - very hard, tough, and relatively smooth. It is a good surface that is easy to frame and to handle. Sometimes I paint on wood or on canvas, but for this painting I have chosen masonite. Some masonite panels come from an art supply store already gessoed and prepared as a painting surface, and those are great too, but this one did not - it simply came from a hardware store. This means that I need to gesso it myself in order to prepare the surface for painting.

I am now mixing my own gesso concoction! I have taken some basic acrylic fluid gesso and have stirred in a bit of brown and blue paint. I don't like using plain white gesso - it is simply a personal preference, and is not necessarily any indication of the finished painting, as it will all be covered in many layers of paint by the end of the project. The reason I tint my gesso is more to put me in the mood/tone mentally of how I want the painting to "feel" so I keep that in mind while I am working. I want this painting to be a night-time painting with a ghostly feel to it so I have gone with a blue-ish tone for the gesso. I also don't like the shiny glare of white gesso, I have a lot of lamps pointed at my desk and it gives me a headache sometimes! So - in this photo I have taken my "palette" (in actuality it is a simply plastic plate from the grocery store), some white acrylic gesso (any brand is pretty much the same), and a few drops of brown & blue acrylic paint. I have mixed this very quickly with a wide flat brush and have now completed three layers of the gesso onto the masonite board, allowing the gesso to dry completely in between each layer.

I usually gesso my panels by hand, with a 1" wide flat brush. I think this gives the panel a smooth yet slightly textured surface (some artists call this the "tooth" of the surface) so that the subsequent layers of paint will have something to "hold on" to. Acrylic paints dry very, very fast, so it is important to keep my hand moving very quickly to avoid too many bumps, lines, or inconsistent areas. I do not mix any water in with my gesso because I do not want it to streak or have any parts of this base surface that will rub away later.

Yet another layer of gesso, I think this is the 5th or 6th very thin coat of gesso. It is better to have many thin layers of gesso rather than only one or two thick layers. This way there will not be any peeling or cracking as the layers dry. Sometimes I use a hairdryer in between layers, as a hairdryer will help speed the process of the fluid in the acrylic base evaporating.

This is the only time I really use a brush this large, the rest of my painting will be done primarily with very small brushes or by painting/smudging with my fingers! Since I am a vegetarian and do not use animal hairs in my brushes, all of my paint brushes are synthetic/manmade fibers. They have a somewhat water-repellent plasticky/nylon feel. Usually these brushes are called "Golden Taklon" fiber, which works well with water and acrylic paints as long as it is cleaned. These brushes are also very inexpensive, are available at any arts & crafts/hobby store, usually only $2.00-$3.00 or so each. There are probably better brushes out there, I recommend buying a variety to see what feels good to you.

The panel is now finished! The final layer of gesso is nearly dry, and I am just about ready to begin painting! The colourful board behind the panel is actually my painting desk, you can see lots of old paint covering it, it is well-loved. Pretty much everything in my studio ends up covered in paint.

Now comes the "rough sketching" phase! I do not however sketch with a pencil, I sketch with a paintbrush & paint! This is a very very narrow brush (sometimes called a "script liner" brush), only a few hairs thick. I have taken some brown & blue paint mixed with white paint and a bunch of water, a bit darker grey than the background gesso. I am still trying to figure out exactly what I'd like my painting to look like - I know I want to paint a fairy in a misty forest with some bright green butterflies, but I am still figuring out where I want everything positioned. This is one of the most creative parts of the process, where imagination comes into play.

The fairy at this point is mostly circles, lines & scribbles. I make these guidelines to decide early on how things will basically be shaped - where her hand will be placed, what direction her face will be looking, etc. If you look carefully at this photo you will see that I have switched from the darker grey paint back to the light coloured background grey paint. This is how I correct or "erase" some of the earlier guide lines I have changed my mind about. Since acrylic paints are opaque, I can cover up lines I do not want by painting over them with the lighter background colour.

Still in the "rough sketch" stage, I have started thinking about how many butterflies I want, and where I want them to be. I know that I will want the butterflies to be the brightest things in the painting (how I see it in my head at this point) so that means that my butterflies will be in front of the fairy character. Being still very rough at this point, I just draw the basic shape of a butterfly right on top of where the fairy is sitting. I can "clean up" this rough sketch later once everything is blocked out and in the right position.

All finished! Well no, not really - just finished with the "rough sketch" stage. It might not be very obvious to anybody else yet, but at this point I can pretty much picture the finished painting in my mind's eye. If you look carefully, you can see the fairy sitting down on the ground, a tree behind her, and several butterflies coming out in a crescent in front of her. While this "sketch" is drying, I am taking this opportunity to mix up some more of the light grey (background) and dark grey (line colour) so I have plenty of paint to create a much more refined sketch.

I am now working on the "refined" sketch! By this point I have painted over most of my original scribbly guide lines and shapes & stick figure by putting several layers of the light coloured "background" grey paint on top of those lines. While that dries, I go over and refine the outlines of this refined sketch more carefully with my skinny brush and darker grey paint. This is when a little more skill and creativity is needed, it is very much like drawing - but with paint & water.

I have used a bit of white paint to start blocking in where some of the highlights and lighter areas will be. Even though all of this will eventually be covered up with even more layers of paint in the end, it is a good guide for me as the artist to keep in mind my initial vision for the piece, to make sure the light source & highlights within the scene are consistent, and to keep the basic shapes of the different forms (I think of them as spheres, cones, cubes, cylinders, etc.) as being three dimensional in space. At this point there are about 6 layers of sketches on top of each other, with most original guide lines & scribbly bits “erased” by painting over them with the solid background colour, so it is looking much more refined. It might be easier to just use a pencil or charcoal for these initial stages (that’s up to you!), but out of personal preference I prefer doing sketchwork in paint (among other reasons I don’t get a lot of smudgy graphite or eraser marks which I don’t like dealing with and can muddy the later paint layers).

Just a bit more work to do on refining the final "sketch" phase. My characters are known for having luminous and highly detailed large eyes, so I spend a lot of time carefully "drawing" out the eyes, the eventual highlights, areas of eyelash, reflection, etc. even at this early stage. I’m still using a skinny narrow paintbrush and dark grey paint for this phase. The eyes are the most important part of the painting, for me at least!

The refined sketch is pretty much complete by now! This is starting to really take shape, with the character developed with line and form, and some of the brightest highlights (in the eyes, hands, and the butterflies) clearly defined.

On second thought, I need to fix up a few things, I think her arm is going a bit wonky so I'm re-painting that part of the sketch.

And making the corner of her shoulder a bit more defined. I sometimes play around a lot at this stage to make sure everything seems well balanced before I start even thinking about colour and shading! It’s a lot easier to make changes at this early stage than it would be later on in the process, so now is a good time to make alterations in the basic layout of necessary.

This is also a good time for me to make sure the frame suits the composition. Since this painting is going to be framed in a Victorian style frame with an "oval window" cutout, there will be some areas of the painting that will eventually be covered up by the gold corners. Because of this, I want to make sure that all the important stuff - the bulk of the figure, the brightest butterflies, etc. all will still be seen once the piece is eventually framed.

Even though the corners and some parts of the butterflies will be covered up by the frame in the end, I will still paint the painting all the way to the edges of the masonite panel. This way I can still make normal rectangular sized prints from the scan of the full painting, which is useful for reproductions, calendars, postcards, etc. in the future.

Since everything seems to be in good order, I have decided to start with the FUN part - colour, shading actual painting! Up to this point most of the process has been more like drawing or sketching, which is fun, but not as exhilarating for me as painting is. Since this is a painting with three clearly defined areas - a background (the tree & forest), a middle ground (the fairy) and a foreground (the close-up butterflies) I am going to work from back to front. Not all of my paintings are this straightforward, but since this one is - it is a logical way to start. I have a slightly larger but still very small brush and am playing around with some hazy background colours. I don’t follow a lot of rules for what shape/size of brush to use for what purpose. I just kinda eyeball it, and if it’s something that I want to look kind of organic and smudgy (like clouds or leaves) I pick a softer, rounder brush. If it’s something in the painting that is hard and pointy (like an eyelash or a straight line) and needs a sharper edge, I just pick a brush that is harder and pointier or sharper. It’s the sort of thing you can determine really by just playing around with a lot of different brushes. I have about half a dozen standard brushes I mostly use, artists typically will build up some favourites to keep in their repertoire.

Since I want a somewhat mysterious distant light source in the very background beyond the tree, I'm starting the background with some very light colours - Naples Yellow mixed with Titanium White with some Primary Cyan. I work exclusively in acrylic paints - they are water soluble and most of them are relatively non-toxic and not too expensive. I use many brands of paints - Winsor-Newton, Grumbacher, Golden, Liquitex, etc. (often just what is on sale at the art store!). Some of my paints are the fluid acrylics (the liquid kind in bottles) and some of my paints are the thicker gel type acrylics (the kind that comes in the metal toothpaste-type tubes).

I have a decent amount of water mixed in with my paints, as you can see in this photo. I am not concerned about full opaque coverage at this stage, I am more concerned with basic colour, tone, and deciding where the darker & lighter areas will be. I paint very quickly at this phase and do not care very much if I stay on the lines of the sketch or not. I will eventually be doing dozens of layers of this transparent watered paint before it is finished.

I have decided that the background near the middle and lower areas of this composition will be dark green, nearly black. So I have mixed some Van Dyke Brown and Pthalo Blue in with my earlier mix of the lighter background colour. I think having a dark background in this part of the painting will later on make the butterflies seem very bright in comparison, as it will provide a high value contrast.

Still working on the early layers of the background, but now moving up to the top part of the composition, I have started to paint in a creepy old tree! Not based on any real tree, this is more of an "idealized" tree. Since I do not have a real tree to look at nor a reference photo, I am imagining this tree and am figuring out where I think the darker parts of the bark would be and where the lighter parts would be. Since there is a light patch of the misty forest behind the branches, I figure that parts of the background light might wrap around the backside edges of the trunk and branches, thus these areas are lighter than the center parts of the tree. This sort of basic visual knowledge simply comes from paying a lot of attention and observing the world around you (I look at a lot of trees when I take walks in nature!).

The first couple of layers of background paint are now complete! I like the way this is looking, the bright spot of light in the distance gives it a mysterious feel, the light hitting her face will help bring extra attention to her eyes, and the dark background at the bottom will make the foreground butterflies "pop" when completed.

I would like the background to be more or less complete before I start working on the middle or foregrounds. This is just common sense really, as it's easier to paint on top of something than excruciatingly around something. So I am mixing up a batch of the same exact colours as before, and doing more layers of background until it looks more opaque and finished. Since I paint with a lot of water, I have a lot of thin, streaky layers of paint to cover up with more layers until things start looking more solid.

I thought the background looked a little bare, so I've decided to add in some more branches, vines, etc. in the distance. By mixing a little more white paint or a little more blue/brown paint in with my existing background colour, I can make different layers of forest appear more hazy/distant or clearer/closer.

I'm also refining the tree a bit more as I paint more layers into the background. Adding short smudges of lighter and darker blue tones, the tangled smudges look more like leaves/vegetation and the trunk appears to have a rough bark-like texture. As you can probably see from my fingers, I use my fingers to blend and smooth the paint a bit (very quickly, before it dries!). As you shall soon see, I utilize a LOT of fingerpainting!

Now the background is complete! I may change things a bit, or glaze over different areas with more paint & water mixes, but overall it is pretty much finished.

Checking that the background is dry (I don't want to drag my hand through wet paint all over the fairy!), I now start thinking about how I'd like to approach the middle ground (the fairy!). I start getting a new batch of paints ready on my palette.

With darker, moodier paintings (or night-time paintings) I always like to base my fleshtones somewhat on the same colours I use for the background. So I have taken white, Van Dyke Brown, Primary Cyan, and Naples Yellow (same as the background palette) but have mixed in some Quinacridone Magenta and Vermilion paint to warm it up a bit and seem more like a believable skintone. I’m not sure about the ins & outs of skintone/race in the Faerie world (if I meet some more faeries, I’ll have to ask), but if this particular fairy were a human, she’d have a sort of pale/caucasian skintone, so I’m going with light pinky neutral tones.

I spend a phenomenal amount of time working on the fleshtones in my paintings. I don't want my characters to look flat or cartoony (despite their exaggerated proportions!) so it is important to me that there is a smoothness, a roundness, and a feeling of actual shape behind my characters' skins. I want them to look like there could really be bones & meat in there, not just plastic. Since I think that the best tool to paint skin is, well, SKIN, I do almost all of this part of the painting with my fingers.

Basically I am mostly using the brush to move the paint from my palette onto my panel. Like loading a little shovel. From there, I use my fingers. I do use the brush a bit more for some of the more narrow areas of her face (areas smaller than my little finger), such as her nose & chin.

I blend very gently, doing many many thin layers of paint. Sometimes I'll count 100-150 very thin layers - just a few atoms thick probably - of paint as I build up the skintone. Yes, this part takes hours. I get up and go to the bathroom to wash my hands with soap & water periodically during this stage so it doesn’t become a grimy mess. In the shadow areas I use more of the blue background tone, to help tie the middle ground fairy character in with the background so she looks as if she could truly exist in that space.

Noticing I had previously designated some very bright highlights on the character's hands back in the "refined sketch" phase, I have added some more white paint to blend into my fleshtones for the highlighted areas of the hands. This will make them appear a little closer to the viewer, making it more apparent that the hands are closer to us than her face is. It will also make it seem as if the light behind her head is spilling through her wing gap and hitting her hands. Being a fairy, she should be a little "sparkly", hehe.

The most time intensive part of the painting (the careful finger-painted blending of her skintones) is now complete! This part took several hours, many many thin layers of paint in precise areas to give a feeling of depth, shadow & highlight to her skin. I’m happy with how the contour of her flesh looks at this point, as she is rather pale it almost gives her a marble sculptural feel.

While the shape & form of the character's flesh has now taken shape, it is still very monotonous in colour.

I now am going to bring some more defined highlights with a paintbrush, adding a bit of blue & white to give a brightness to the areas of her body that should appear more brightly lit. If the light source had been yellow, I’d mix some yellow with the white highlights, if it were violet – I’d mix violet in with the white highlights, and so forth.

Now I'm happy!

With the monochromatic underpainting of her flesh complete, I'm now starting to decide how to add some more colour to her skin. Even though it's overall a blue toned night/mysterious feeling palette, I think she would benefit from some warmer tones. So I've poured out some more paint onto my palette - magenta, orange, bright yellow, etc. I went ahead and got a new plastic paint for this part, as the other plate was getting pretty gunky and I didn’t want the old neutral paint pools to mix in too much with these brighter, warmer tones.

Looking at the fairy, I try to think about where the brightest pigments of warm tones would be. You can figure this out yourself by simply observing nature, looking in the mirror, looking at your friends & family, reference photos, hiring models, etc. I'm just relying on my memory of what people with fair complexions look like - which parts are more pink?

Determining that the brightest (most highly pigmented) areas of a person are often on the insides of the eyelids and the tear ducts of the eyes, I begin there with some bright red. I don't necessarily plan on keeping this so bright, but since I know I will be doing many more layers of paint on top of it I understand that I can knock it down to be more subtle in a future layer of paint.

I think this forest might be a little chilly, and she's not wearing that much, so I'm guessing her hands and elbows, extremities, etc. might be turning a bit pink too. I'm using red and yellow together to make a pinky-orange tone with some water on a narrow brush, defining the more highly pigmented areas.

Her skintone is looking much more colourful now. my fingers to keep it very smooth looking.

I've done several layers at this point, mostly with

Since her skintone is looking to be in pretty good shape, I've decided to get out some darker paints and start refining her eyes by determining the extent of her eyelashes. I have some Van Dyke brown mixed with Burnt Sienna and some Hansa Yellow for this part.

Now the other eye! I've also mixed a bit of white in with the previous fleshtone to make the original redness look more pink, more subtle.

One of my favourite parts - the eyes! Since this painting is going to have green butterflies, I have decided to give this fairy some very green eyes. I spend a lot of time studying eyes, iris colours, looking at childrens' eyes, adults' eyes, animal eyes, doll eyes, etc. so I have a very good visual memory for such things. Often people's eyes are not all one colour, but contain several gradations of colour. My sister Kachina for example has green eyes with an orange center - I decided to think about this while I painted these eyes.

Looking at the piece as a whole, I really like the darkness of her eyelashes (mascara?) compares to how light/bright green her irises are - they almost seem to glow!

Her eyelashes might look a little too dark though, so I've decided to soften them by painting some more opaque lighter brown around the edges. This way it makes a smoother transition between the harshness of the nearly-black lashes and her very pale skin.

More subtle, but I like this better.

Now that her face is pretty much done, I'm going to paint her wings! I don't want to start on her hair yet too much, because I know the wings will need to show through behind the more transparent parts of her hair. Since I want her wings to appear somewhat diaphanous and translucent, and since the background behind her is quite dark, her wings will mostly be dark.

Thinking about transparent insect wings - dragonfly wings for example - I decide to make the wings into little "cells" with darker veins throughout them.

I have outlined the cellular veins of the wings with a dark Pthalo Blue and Van Dyke brown mixture, two of the main colours I used while painting the background of this piece. I've used some watered down paint of the same mixture to completely cover the wings in two coats, showing them to be darkly transparent. Even with two coats of paint, it’s still pretty streaky and scrubby, but that is okay – I just want this colour to be a dark base onto which I will be painting some lighter & more opaque paint layers.

With the third layer of paint on the wings, I have left one tip more empty of paint. If you look closely you will see that this is because I want the shape of the dark tree behind her to show through slightly, reinforcing the idea that the wings are see-through, thus the dark part of the wing follows the dark arc shape of the trunk of the tree.

I have now created a lighter colour mixture reminiscent of the light source in the distant background. It has a cool greenish yellow feel, mixed with a tad of white paint for opacity on the highlights. I have put a bit more of this light paint near the top of the wing to again show that the tree trunk can be seen behind her.

I decided that the blue/green colour was getting a little overwhelming and I needed to tie in some warmer tones so that the fairy's pinker fleshtones didn't seem too out-of-place. So I decided to make the veins of the wings a more magenta/red colour instead of the previous black/blue colour. I'm also adding a few highlights of pink on the wings to help "warm" it up a little.

The whole painting at this stage is coming along nicely! I'm very happy with how the wings have turned out. Now all she needs is her clothing, hairdo and jewelry.

Time for some colour decisions. To keep the painting from turning too blue, I know I need to tie in the green of her eyes and the eventual bright green of the butterflies with a neutral colour. So - I have taken some Van Dyke Brown, a touch of Vat Orange, Naples Yellow, and a bit of Primary Cyan to make a greenish brown colour for her legs and for the butterflies of the foreground. I'm not really ready to work on the butterflies yet, but I wanted to give them an early layer of brighter colour (a little more green, less brown than her stockings) so that I can remind myself to differentiate the more neutral tones of her middle-ground clothing and the more brilliant green of the foreground butterflies.

More colour decisions - I knew I wanted to give the fairy some striped stockings, but up until this point I had not really thought about which colours. Since I want the butterflies to appear to be much closer than the main figure, I do not want super bright colours on her clothing, competing for their attention. In this photo I have taken some water mixed with Van Dyke Brown and Quinacridone Magenta and very lightly painted some stripes of this brownish-red colour on top of the greenish brown stockings on her legs.

Looking at the picture as a whole, I think I like this colour choice.

Before I start putting too much detail on her legs, I think it's time to start shading in her skirt. I'm starting with the shadows first, which will be very dark since this part of the character is already in the shade. I bring out my little narrow brush loaded with some of the darker tones (the Van Dyke Brown and Pthalo Blue mixed with water) and basically "sketch" some darker shadows where I think the folds of the cloth should appear.

Keeping with the darker neutrals of her outfit, I also paint some folds of cloth around her arms and blouse area. I have mixed a couple of shades of Burnt Sienna - the darker shades have Van Dyke Brown and Pthalo Blue for shadow, the lighter shades have Naples Yellow and tiny bit of white for the highlighted areas.

I am now using the Burnt Sienna shades to help give form to the lower part of her dress.

Her dress is now nearly complete! I took some of the more subtle green tones and added some finishing details on her outfit - some lacy leaves around the top, a ribbon trim around the skirt, etc. This gives some added visual interest as well as tying the browns of the outfit into the greens featured elsewhere in the composition.

I've let the paint on her outfit completely dry while I mix up the new colours to start in on her striped stockings!

Using a slightly darker mix of the same colours of green I used for the dress trim, and some of the Van Dyke Brown / Quinacridone Magenta mix for the reddish stripes, I begin a more opaque layer of paint on her stockings. You may notice that while painting, I keep my brush strokes in the curved direction of the shape of her legs. This way her stockings will be more three-dimensional, as if there are actually rounded legs under there and not just sticks!

As always, I use my finger to smudge, fingerpaint, and quickly blur together some of the more obvious brushstrokes or streaks. I put a lot of water in my paints, so it takes them a minute to dry instead of only a few seconds (the more water, the slower it dries). You can also see at this point the butterflies are already standing out in the foreground very nicely!

Having completed two more base coats of solid colour on her legs in the deeper tones, I have added a bit of Naples Yellow and White to the green and red mixtures. I am now painting some of the midtones in the legs, adding some edge-highlights on the viewer's right hand side to indicated where the lightsource behind her would be hitting her legs. The shading/highlights at this step are very important as this is when the shape of the figure really starts to seem more three-dimensional.

Now a total of seven layers of paint on her legs, I have taken some significantly lightened red & green tones (with more white added) to add the final highlights. This will give her stockings a very satiny/shiny look!

I want to give the stockings several minutes to dry completely, so in the meantime I have decided to start working on her hair. I want her to have silvery hair to give her an ethereal look. Silver, being shiny, mostly reflects the colours around it - so I have mixed some paint mostly using the colours from the background of the painting, with varying amounts of white paint added. I've smudged in the basic shades with my fingers, and am now using a tiny script liner paintbrush with a lot of water to paint in some individual hairs.

There is no need to paint every single hair on her head, just a few here and there to add texture.

Her hair is pretty much complete!

I had sketched in some jewelry in her hair back in the "refined sketch" stage. I basically just painted little white dots to leave a space for some tiny green spheres, and a more elaborate faceted emerald (based on a piece of fake costume jewelry I had in a drawer here in my studio!).

Using some of the brighter green tones (made from Primary Cyan, Hansa Yellow and Pthalo Blue in varying levels) I am applying hints of sparkle and shape with my tiny paintbrush. Looking at how light reflects off of the plastic costume emerald on my desk, I emulate this in the painted jewelry - painting geometric triangle shapes to make the gem look faceted and sparkly.

I add a few blue tones in the faceted emerald, to emulate the reflection of the blue background, and add some white & yellow highlights.

Almost done!

The middle ground (main character) is now complete.

This leaves only the butterflies!

Truly the star of this painting, I have saved these butterflies for last. Having worked from the background to the middleground first, and planning to use the brightest and lightest tones on the foreground, theoretically these butterflies should look as if they are the closest objects to the viewer. I'm using Titanium White (a very bright white) paint on the butterflies now, deciding which parts of the wing should be the most reflective.

I want these butterflies to appear nearly iridescent and very shiny, so deciding where the brightest whites will be is very important within the composition. These are imaginary butterflies - not a real species that exists in nature - so I don't have a real butterfly or photo to look at. I do however have a scientific model of a similar butterfly - a "Blue Morpho" butterfly - here in my studio, so I study it for a bit - holding it at different angles - to see how the light hits it. I attempt to re-create this in my painting by putting white paint where the light shines most.

Iridescent butterflies in nature will refract yellow tones right next to the brightest highlights. So now I am taking some Hansa Yellow mixed with water and painting on top of most of the white, letting the white shine through with a yellowish tint.

I have mixed some Pthalo Blue and Van Dyke Brown to create a darker colour, almost black. I am starting now to paint the darker edges of the butterflies with this mixture.

Still painting the dark parts of the butterfly wings - since my paint & water mixture is very thin, I will need to do many, many layers for them to look very dark.

While the dark layers are drying, I have mixed up some Pthalo Blue with a great deal of water - just a tiny drop of paint and mostly water. Carefully painting this watery blue mixture on top of the earlier Hansa Yellow and Titanium White layers makes the butterflies suddenly look green! You may have noticed by now that despite this being a rather green painting, I have never used any green paint. I prefer to create the illusion of green by layering or combining blue and yellow, I think that gives a painting a more jewel-like green effect.

Yay! After about six more layers of the Pthalo Blue / Van Dyke Brown blackish mixture on the dark parts, and more blue and yellow on the light parts, the butterflies are completed. It's time to sign the painting!

And here she is all dry and finished - "Absinthe Butterflies!” I hope you enjoyed watching my progress! Jasmine Becket-Griffith