This beautiful woman was a friend who loved masks, dark paintings and repetitive designs in art. She inspired this mixed media piece. I gave her the original as a going away gift.
I had a tough time making this drawing slash painting. I used 19 x 24" bristol vellum paper and a dark 6B pencil to start with. My first mistake was using such a dark pencil for the shading. Click this Instagram link to look at the first sketch of this piece: Click Me! I have many more drafts and details of this piece at different stages posted on Instagram.
Then I used Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. The pencils are amazing! If you use them extremely heavy the water makes the color vibrant! I learned that you can also use it on silk.
But it is not easy to color such a large space with just pencils. So I used Prismacolor hard pastels to cover the larger spaces and left the pencils for details. I made a happy mistake and painted over the hard pastels with water and the results were extremely fortunate.
I used Sennelier oil pastels for the iridescent eyes and the top blue mask.
I think mistakes make you more creative. That is always why I draw in my sketch book with a pen. It helps you try to conceal the mistake or make it a part of your design. Mistakes takes you on detours you would have never tried. If you feel like a perfectionist and it is affecting your creativity, strictly use a pen in your sketchbook. I forbid you to use an eraser and pencil.
There is so much I don't like about this piece. I want it to look better. I don't like the lines by the knob and the middle mask. I wanted her to look like a drawing, not a painting, kind of like a character out of a comic book stuck in a vibrant world of colors. I do not think that translated at all. This picture does not suck. It does not matter that I was not able to fully translate my vision on paper. I think overall it is a great piece for someone who hasn't fully embraced art as a daily habit. :-}
Prints are available at Society6.
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