Saturday, January 25, 2014

New Painting - Traveling Girl

I had a lot of fun with this painting.  Meet one of my high school students.  I saw this great picture of her and told her if she didn't paint it I would.  Well, we both did!  Here's mine.

First I drew her in.  Easy and straightforward.  Actually, the initial drawing was on a smaller paper, but I was really satisfied, so I decided to use some acrylic medium to adhere it to a bigger board.

Then it was time for color.  I used both liquid acrylics and watercolor and painted the entire thing.  You would note that half her face is pink and sparkly -  well - that's fingernail polish.  This, as many good things in art, was serendipitous.  My daughter broke a bottle of fingernail polish.  Seriously, has that ever happened to you?  We've done lots of polish over the years and it's never happened to us!  BUT, at this point in time, I stood with a broken bottle in my hand, polish filling my palm thinking "Pigment.  Raw pigment.  What can I do with this?"  Because it was the perfect, sunny, sparkly color, it ended up on my young friend.  Here's a closeup of the painting, showing her sparkly side.


At this point, I was ready for collage.  As she's strapped into a car looking pretty and happy on a sunny day, I added happy things - music and maps.  Maps which include some of my favorite places.  If I was strapped into a car on a sunny day, I could take off to any one of these places and be perfectly content.  My other papers collaged down are from many sources - I choose them for color, interest and texture.

The last bit of serendipity was when I was walking down by Hubble and Hudson.  Looking down, I found her earring.  Well, it's an earring now.  I'm not exactly sure what it WAS... maybe something from a combination lock or somebody's watch.  At any rate - I knew what I was going to do with it!


Once finished, another fairly thick layer of gel medium over the entire painting, and voila!  Traveling Girl!  Of course she's for sale - let me know if you're interested.



2 comments:

  1. I love the earring idea! Great fun and colorful piece. Thank you for sharing!

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    1. Thank you so much! it was fun making it! too.

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