"Lost [in the forest of the soul]" Painting Preview

(Loads of posts today! I hope you don't mind? Some days I'm just...enthusiastic...hahaha)

I just finished this painting today and thought I would share it first with all of you. 

It is an attempt at exploring a style of painting I have been thinking of adopting for a while, a mix between soft watercolour and bold gouache, surrealism and semi-realism. My themes are often quite dark, but I don't want a painting style that would emphasize that to the point of horror. I want to create the possibility of bolder colours if I want to use them, while keeping a slightly nagging sense of...oddness. Of something hiding beneath the layers. 

I really really enjoyed using pure watercolours, right next to bold gouache planes of colour, so I think I'll be attempting this again in not too long.   

The title, "Lost [in the forest of the soul]" comes from a sentence that was floating in my mind for days, which I was puzzled by as I had no idea where it came from or why it was in my head. Therefore, I attempted to paint it, because...I suppose that's what I do...

I want to be train myself to be satisfied with simpler ideas once in a while, because I can easily get carried away with concepts that require a few days to paint, which, while being very enjoyable and valid in its own way, can also be counter productive sometimes (for me). So this painting was solely based on the idea of seeing the background through her eyes, and I tried to build a simple visual narrative around that. 

So here you go. :)

You guys are the first ones to see this, it will go on Instagram this evening, and will be this week's Youtube video also. 

And now, onto my big piece for this month! (Sorry, that will mean the process PDF will go up some time next week, I hope you don't mind the slight delay!)