Gothic Design Cruising

I've been MIA for over 20 days for a good reason: my husband and I went on a month-long adventure which included crossing the Atlantic on a cruise from Europe to Brasil with some dear friends. Before leaving I selected some pictures to work on while aboard: this one is based on a Gothic artifact found in the John Leighton’s Suggestion of Designs (1880) found in archive dot org. Inktense pencils and Pitt Brush pens with a waterbrush.

It’s an exciting thing to cross an entire ocean. I had never done it and it was a little scary but fun to look around and see miles and miles of water around me. I think I even so a school of sharks or dolphins at some point!

Packing for this trip took me some thinking. We wanted to travel with minimal luggage, so it had to be strategic. It took me LONGER to pack my pencils and pens than to pack everything else! I created a sort of pencil case using velcro pencil inserts attached to the inside of a soft zippered lunch box.

Here’s a the before and after shading and embellishing:

The picture took me about 5 days to complete - I was in no hurry and had tons of other stuff to do. But almost every afternoon I found time to do a little drawing on it.

The picture measures 4x6 inches on hotpressed watercolor paper. Here are some close-ups:

Feel free to share or pin these images.

Remember that all images are Copyright Eni Oken.

 
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2024Eni Okencoloring, historic, gothic