About Sandrine Pelissier

I grew up in France but have been living in Canada for the last 12 years, I am currently located in North Vancouver and work from a studio on Pemberton Avenue.

Watercolor is my medium of choice because of the unique way it allows me to render light. The transparency of this medium can make it look like the painting is lit from behind and the light is shining through the paper In my portraits, I like to tell stories about the people around me. I am very interested in childhood fantasy or fairy tales (I wish it would snow Flowers, Hair Balloon, Georgia, the Spanish dress and the Eclectus Parrot). I also like to induce a dialogue with the viewer in some paintings dealing more with introspection and mood (Mixed, In the studio).

Those portraits are not about likeness or knowing the people that are being painted, as I see my models as actors in a movie, they are the faces that will allow me to tell a story or to show emotions. Those faces are a source of endless fascination and I find the subtlety that can be achieved with watercolor well suited to the complexity of the human face.

My technique involves the accumulation of many transparent layers of watercolor. Then I like to incorporate mixed media in the background, work sometimes with some contouring. I also sometimes like to add some drawing on top of the painting or some graphic elements…

Sandrine’s Website

Sandrine’s Blog

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Recycling Life, Mixed media on canvas

The biggest canvas I ever painted, it is 46 × 46 inches and barely fits in my car. I painted this from a picture I took earlier this year at Spanish banks beach (Vancouver-BC) with India ink, newspaper collage, acrylics and graphite.
Here are some of the steps I took :

I started by drawing with graphite a rough outline of the elements in the landscape. I did with the canvas upside down to try to be more precise.

I make a collage with newspapers on the foreground, I tear little pieces and glue them with acrylic medium.

Here is a close up.

I paint with white acrylic paint on top of some parts of the collage.

I avoided the area that will be the trunk of the trees with my collage.

On the lower part of the foreground I paint on top of the newspaper collage with India ink

The ink and the white acrylic are mixing in some parts to make a light grey.

I am trying to have a gradation of paint with darker areas at the bottom of the painting.

I am painting the sea and the mountains in the background, still using a mix of acrylic paint and India ink.

I add a thick layer of medium on top of my collage to make it waterproof. If not the India ink will lift if wet.

I am painting the sea and the mountains in the background, still using a mix of acrylic paint and India ink.

I splatter the red paint mix on the foreground.

I then trace all the trees and branches, the drawing is so complex and detailed that I used graphite paper and worked one small area at a time

Once an area is drawn, I paint it with india ink.

Here is a detail of all the intricate branches.

I add a light wash of acrylic paint on the trees for added texture. I did fix the india ink before with Krylon workable fixative.