improving with time....and practice....and practice.....and more practice....and....

Hi all!  I hope everyone's having a great summer so far!  I'm spending it at the pool, wracking up the wrinkles and sun damage so that my kids can get some energy out.  

I just finished my latest painting, and as usual, I like to post progression pics and helps so that you can tackle your own projects with confidence.  Yay!

So, this latest one I painted from a photo that my husband surreptitiously took when he was in Asia.  I'm not sure exactly where.  He was riding a ferry somewhere and he snapped this photo of this elderly lady who was waiting for the ferry.  I just fell in love with her...her posture, the wrinkled brown skin, the turban on her head and the eclectic shirt...along with the fascinating and textured background...it all made for an interesting project.

The first time I painted her a few years ago, I put her in a show and she sold that night at the show.  I guess she was a hit.  Recently, I decided to try her again, larger this time...and practice some of the newer techniques that I'm working on.  There's a HUGE difference between the two paintings, it's really amazing.  

It's kind of funny to think that somewhere in Asia, there's a grandma who has no idea that someone is studying her every feature and turning her into art.  

Here's the painting I painted 2 years ago...

Aaaaand, here's the one I just finished....It's fun to see them side by side and see how much I've changed...even my signature has more confidence.  ha ha.

Verrrrry interesting.....I'm just looking back and forth and I'm realizing that in the first one, I was committing all of the classic "newer watercolor" artist mistakes....too heavy handed with color being one of them.

Anyhow, here are the step by step pics.  

I did mask the flowers on her shirt and parts of the chain link fence.  I also masked the light reflection in her eyes b/c I tend to easily lose that.  I masked her hair, too, but I ended up painting over it and using some white gouache at the end b/c the masking fluid made it look like she had white worms coming out of her head.  

Exciting stuff.

Originally, her shirt was kind of a boring brown, but I decided to liven things up with color this time.  I liked many colors I used for the shadowed side of her and how the yellow stands out from the background.  

Anyhow, ask me any questions that you might have!  I hope this inspires you to find a picture of a grandparent or something and tackle those tricky wrinkles....they turned out to be fun.

Happy Painting!

Cady