LB2016 : Expressive mixed media portrait

Another lesson from Life Book 2016 - this was a bonus lesson from Pauline Agnew and was created on a page to which she'd added a base layer of random paint colours. Since I had some lovely under paper lying around, I decided to use that as my base.

Rather than draw an original face (this was a bonus lesson after all) we were to draw from an old master. Since I ♥ Rosetti's work, I chose this gorgeous "La Ghirlandata" 1873

I only wanted to do the face, so enlarged my book page on my photocopier to get a larger version in black and white, and started drawing with an Inktense watercolor pencil "Bark" colour so less harsh than black.

Click on the photo to see it larger. I am no Rosetti, but I like how she looks and I gave her a more modern look with her hair and happy with the flower addition that came from following how the paint appeared on the page

I wondered about adding a bit more colour, and decided to add some orange to her lips and hair once I put the original book plate beside my drawing

Here's a close-up of her face

I particularly loved how I could locate the left eye on purple paint on the page (I glued the paper down orientated with this in mind). Here she is completed :

I was getting a bit overwhelmed that I was "getting behind" on the Life Book lessons, but this was pure fun and low stress because I started with such an imperfect background. And I have a plan for which lessons I'm going to get onto next. See you again soon.
Go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. You can see all my posts about Life Book this year HERE.