Painting to confirm my chosen media & style of working.

This painting was completed to see how I could combine the medieval style borders with my own designs and detailed animal images. The bold, primary-colour border brings a liveliness and boldness to the modest, unimposing rabbit image that is the centrepiece. In the red outer border, i have chosen a delicate vine and leaf design to compliment the detailed rabbit image, so that the juxtaposition between the two styles is not so stark. The watercolour is versatile enough to be able to effectively cope with being applied in bright block for the border,  light, flowing stripes for the grass, watery washes for the under layers of the rabbit, the high pigment, textural stippling for the top layers to create a fur texture and still be enough absorbed by the paper so that I can work on top of the paint with ink, fineliner and gel pen. It is the flexibility of the watercolour that I have chosen to add so much detail to my paintings, as opposed to the flat, simplified and stylised egg tempura paintings of original medieval art.
Gum arabic will allow me to create fine white and light coloured patterns and borders and add a texture and a range of mark making for the animal pelts.