I have been tied up for a couple of days. Three sick dogs and a husband only a week after surgery, three tours in three galleries at the IMA, but who’s complaining? Dogs are pretty well recovered, Ken is progressing well and I had interested, interesting people on my tours so life is good. The down period has given me time to plan my next painting – in my head anyway. Are you like me? I wish I did as much painting on paper as I do in my head!
I decided to flex my watercolor muscles by using the knowledge I’ve gain through my colored pencil portraits to paint my first ever watercolor portrait. I decided to use the face of a little girl that moved me when I saw it in National Geographic – I know I shouldn’t be working from NG photos but I wanted to focus my time on painting. This was intended to be an exercise not a painting for sale – and like I said her face spoke to me. I completed the painting today. I used layers of lots of different colors to get the modeling and the skin tones. I wound up cropping the painting since I really did a sloppy job on the bottom part of her torso and the background but I was pretty happy with my first watercolor face. I have done graphite and colored pencil portraits and it was really difficult giving up the control I feel with pencils. Here she is.