Here is my kawaii piece for Tracy Verdugo’s Story Painting classes, Chapter 1 Lesson 3. Whilst Tracy demonstrated her drawing with a mermaid, I was in a floaty mood and went for a fairy instead! The story is a bit linked to a previous work, Happily Sentimental with all the objects and memories.
Starting a Collage
Binding my Cansons Mixed Media paper down with some masking tape, I began with a pencil sketch with blue aquarelle pencil. My fairy has big wings and holding a Hello Kitty on one hand and on the other, what is meant to be a bunch of flowers. Hello Kitty represents my closeness with my late mother as a child, and the flowers symbolize the roses my boyfriend bought in honor of her birthday. Collages from some pretty paper napkins were then glued on around my fairy. More flowers to reflect abundance, and a lone butterfly to means feeling free.
Pretty in Purple
For this painting, we use the same gouache colors as we used for the Happily Sentimental painting: Pale Pink, Emerald Green, Mint Green, Lemon Yellow and Gold. I had to think about what background color would work well with these colors. Blue would be a logical choice, but I felt that it is so often used. I then went for purple instead, a color I hardly use as a background. Acrylic inks in purple (Sennelier) and a shimmery version of Violet (D&W) were used for this. In some areas, I created some negative space using the tip of the ink dropper. And wow, so far so pretty!
Painting the Fairy
As mentioned earlier we used the same gouache colors as before. Coloring my fairy was easy. Pale Pink for the dress and gold for the wings The rest of the colors were scattered around amongst the bunnies and bears with the intention to paint Hello Kitty’s ribbon and outfit in Mint Green. I used Antelope Brown for the hair and mixed that shade with white for the face. Another collage was added on the dress to fill it up a bit more. Looking really kawaii!
Making Her So Cute
My fairy’s eyes were painted with Payne’s Grey ink with the whites dotted with Titanium White paint. We love them bright and wide! I further added some details in the background with the gouache, namely the intended flowers she’s holding, It turned out not looking too flowery but could certainly pass as a magic wand perhaps? How sweet. Then a few doodles with a white acrylic marker, and we’re good to go! As now my kawaii little floaty fairy…
Another sweet painting! This time in fantasy-style. I love the color combination with the purple background makimg the fairy, flowers and little animals pop out. It was certainly a fun and amazing session. When I have the time in the near future I would love to try painting a mermaid as Tracy had done!
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My Kawaii Quarter 