She Blooms in Ink : high contrast portrait

During my Summer Holidays (Dec-Jan) I did a number of lessons from Tam's She Blooms in Ink online class. I enjoyed them immensely and completed 4 of the lessons on A3 landscape watercolour paper

as well as having a go at a couple of upturned face portraits in my altered art journal

I began on separate sheets of watercolour paper because I always intended to sew them together as a book. This month, I decided to complete some of the other lessons. This class actually has instruction for 10 faces if you do them all but I decided 2 more would satisfy my feeling of completing the class for now (Life long access ♥). This lesson was the high contrast portrait - I liked that I was attempting another angled portrait but this time facing the opposite way. First a pencil sketch

and then I decided I'd try using my distress inks for this lesson with a water brush

This worked really well because you can add water for lightening of colours - this is all spiced marmalade ink  : 

And I went on to add lots of high contrast inky loveliness. It was great to be limited by my inks for choice of colours. 

Then it was time to add some black - I decided to put some black ink into a separate brush for this - the ink was a bit thick so I added some water too

I only used a very little white sharpie paint pen on her eye. The other white on the face is the watercolour paper without colour. Inky blooms in place of hair

and here she is finished ♥

I am so happy with how she turned out. She definitely blooms in ink with high contrast, and I am especially proud of how I managed to leave some white space on this one. Tam's She Blooms in Ink online class is now available for self study with life long access. You can register HERE. See all my posts about this class HERE.