Threshold of The Enchantress
A doorway woven from magic, a faithful familiar and a quiet return to the enchanted woods
Step through the portal into an ancient, glowing glade.
‘Threshold of the Enchantress‘ contrasts bold, hand-inked silhouette work with a delicate background of soft purples, greens and gold. A striking piece for lovers of witchy folklore, gothic fantasy and magic.
The Inspiration
I have always loved the idea of stepping through a portal into another place and as a child loved programmes like ‘Mr Benn’ by David McKee and books like ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C.S.Lewis. Consequently the idea of creating pictures with a portal of some kind had to happen. So acquiring the archway stamp was a perfect excuse to do one.
The Craft
‘Threshold of the Enchantress’ started as a background that I had made months earlier using alcohol inks. It’s a process I love to do from time to time and very messy. I played around with several stamps of different types of trees, witches, fairies and animals before finally settling upon the witch and her familiar and the idea of a dense woodland and path. I didn’t want the archway to be completely central which is why it is slightly off centre.
The arch was stamped first and then the trees were layered around it. This image called for lots of dense foliage and trialing vines in a variety of coloured inks. On the forest floor there had to be mushrooms and strange flowers. The witch or Enchantress and her familiar were then added. Although, to me, the cat seems to be thinking … ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this!’
A variety of metalic pens and watercolour pencils were used to build the colour into the picture. The final stage was the addtion of metalic posca pen dots and glitter glue to add the magical sparkle to the finished piece.