Summer Heat
A Doodlio Studio production
It all started from a Draw this in your Style with a summer theme by Lizzy @ lizzywatercolor. This is a popular Instagram challenge, where an artist makes a picture and other artist follow doing their own version of the same subject.
Seeing the summery theme with purple and pink hair against yellows sparked a question that became the core of the painting
Seeing the summery theme with purple and pink hair against yellows sparked a question that became the core of the painting
‘‘How would an image that shows the effect of temperature work?’’
Being interested in merging science with art, a couple of concepts came to mind, like a painting that results from heat, temperature-based ink or even doing a picture with something that required tempering for a specific result like chocolate.
These options kickstarted the research, which due to the pandemic happened exclusively online. The first results were either too simple or too dangerous.
The time wasn’t wasted as I got to learn temperature trivia like Plank’s temperature, considered a fundamental limit of temperature.
But at last, an exciting result - thermochromatic ink - that changes with heat. This had a lot of potential!
A trial pack from Special FX Creative was pordered and arrived promptly.
The ink ordered was the type that turned invisible once heated.
The plan was set: make a digital version of the character with pink hair, apply purple paint on top, and when the purple heats up, it will create the illusion it shifted to pink.
It was time to start experimenting! And with experimentation comes failure.
For the first experiment, ink was applied with a broad paintbrush, but tthis failed because the brush would condense the ink into a thick layer that would turn white instead of transparent when heated!
More tests with different tools and papers needed to be doe
Allowing oneself to try and fail opened the door to new tools like the spatula and paint roller!
Below you can see an assortment of results.
The best results were achieved using the paint roller.
With the technique sorted, the digital painting was the next step.
The picture was painted in Photoshop, leaving some unfinished parts so they could take thermochromatic ink on top.
As initially planned, the hair was kept pink so that it could get a purple layer of thermochromatic ink later. The sunflower wreath was kept unpolished so that yellow finishing touches could be added later, covering bleeding ink
The unfinished picture was printed along with a black and white version to use as a stencil. A thin layer of thermochromatic ink was applied to the printed image. After drying, yellow finishing touches were added.
But it didn’t go well…
2 problems were showing
Applying purple didn’t have the wanted effect !
Since the purple ink was applied with such a thin layer, it blended with the pink color, created a stronger pink. Now, when heated, the picture was changing from stronger pink to pink, which wasn't very exciting.
The shadows were faded!
When heated, the hair shadows looked faded, especially when compared to the other shadows in the pictures.
If the ink was all over the image, it would be ok since all shadows would be faded, but this way it looked like a mistake!
It was a failure! No idea how to get around the situation!
It was time to review the process and make some adjustments. There was something to be learnt from the failed attempts.
For the hair, use blue instead of purple. While unsure of this, I had to trust my logic.
For the shadows, after playing in Photoshop, they were changed to a vibrant hue, keeping the same contrast between base color and shadow. This was inspiration taken from Impressionistic paintings.
It’s stricking how much brighter the shadows on the second version were and how brighter they made the whole image. It’s almost as if the painting was luminescent!
With the newfound answers, the final version of this painting could be done.
There it was…
🌻 Summer Heat was complete!! 🌻
Failures became small victories!
This result could not be achieved without all the failures along the way.
DETAILS
Dimensions: A4 paper dimensions • 11.6 Inches x 8.26 Inches x 0.1 Inches
Medium: Mixed Media - Digital Print on Paper and Thermochromatic Ink
Software: painting in Adobe Photoshop, video in Adobe Spark
Music in video: Sunlit Valley from Adobe Spark
