Commissioned Fans 2009

Here are the fans I was commissioned to do so far this year. Most of them should look rather familiar, as they're all recreations of fans I've done previously.

The four on the left were done for the mother of a friend. She wanted me to recreate four fans I'd done previously, one from '07, two from '08's convention set, and one from the flower rainbow I did. She also requested tassels for two of the fans, and you can see the bead adornments in the inset box. I'm quite happy with that dragonfly tassel, and have enough beads I can remake it for myself.

Of those four, the calanthe orchids (bottom left) are the most like the original fan, being almost identical. The dragonflies are the least like the original, since the original was done in colored pencils and I wasn't about to use colored pencils again. So I did my best to make a good-looking dragonfly fan in watercolors. I've determined I need to play around with some watercolor tricks `hibbary mentions on her account, and maybe get my hands on some iridescent watercolors.

The two fans on the right were sold to attendees at ConnectiCon who missed out on buying the originals. I had a printed catalogue of sorts of the fans I had in stock at the convention, and put SOLD stickers on each picture as the fans themselves sold. Two attendees really liked how the koi and lionfish dragon fans looked, but both had already been sold to other attendees. So they commissioned me to recreate the fans for them. The colors are slightly different due to blending and the like, but they still look fairly close. The contrast in the reds on the lionfish dragon are much better in this version, and the ripples around the cherry blossoms in the koi fan are subtler.

TD: mechanical pencil and inking pens on premade folding fans; watercolors; heavy thread and various beads with a bit of beading wire. Approx. 6 hours per fan, give or take.

Steal, and I throw beads at your head.