Marvelous Moondancer

My brother is a professional mime and dancer (UK folks, you should look him up!) but I don’t recall ever drawing dancers much. I drew one during Inktober last year and he actually came out really well. I was also helping out a local ballet company at the time, and ended up painting a whole bunch of random things for them (a toy box, and the firebird dancer, for starters.)

Pinterest, that great source of inspiration, saw me hunting for images all those times and has helpfully been handing me gorgeous photographs of dancers for months now. I guess it’s no surprise that I started thinking of ways to create more mythic performers.

It took me two tries to get the moondancer the way I wanted…and then I realized neither had wings and I had sort of wanted her to have wings. Whoops.

Oh well.

I guess I’ll just have to paint another.

These are both done with Inktense backgrounds, and the dancers themselves are brushpen. I’m really enjoying the blending of Inktense as a background. I also love watercolor backgrounds, so it’s not like I’ll switch entirely—but sometimes you just want the hazey look. I used hematite watercolor in the skirt of the New Moon (the dark dressed dancer), because the granulation and flow was JUST want I wanted.

Neither of them are for sale anywhere. But could be, so just say the word 😉

Which one do you like better? I like the pale dancer better than the dark dancer. It was more what I was going for originally, but they both have appeal.