Dressed up for Easter

It’s Good Friday today, and Little One is going on an Easter Egg hunt! She spent last night boiling some eggs and coloring them. Now she wants to show you her stash! She decided to color her eggs simple this year, her favorite colors of mint green and of course baby pink! Oh and look at her amazingly bright pink dress too. She loves dressing up in pretty colors

Bright Pink Dress

Actually, this painting started from the dress. Loving the color! I had some Holbein Acryla gouache paint left over from another painting I had been working on, and rather than wasting it I took another sketchbook and drew a dress on it for later use. Few months later, I came back to it and the rest is history. I definitely had to paint Little One around the dress, and began sketching with pencil. For composition I added some ovals below originally intended for puddles. They turned out to be otherwise, as you know.

Start Painting!

For this phase, I switched from gouache to acrylic ink. I began with the background; turquoise blue for the sky and yellow green for the ground. Notice how I traced the ovals with the tip of the ink dropper before spreading the color with a wet brush. How cool is that effect! Once the background was done, I went for the face by blending the usual Titanium White with Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold, then sketching the eyes in with colored pencil. The hair was first drawn on the area with red, green and blue oil pastels for that multi streaky look, followed by brushing in some Antelope Brown ink.

Back to Gouache

I then switched back from acrylic to gouache as I love the strong vibrant colors and matte finish. This time, I thought I’d made Little One’s eyes green for fun. The Emerald Green seemed a great choice. The remainder of the paint was then briskly brushed onto the hair to give the painting some color unity. At this point, I also decided that the puddles ought to be Easter Eggs instead. What better timing is that! Although the shapes are not exactly egg-like, I think they’re rather cute. They were firstly filled in with mint green and lilac.

Making Her Even Prettier

With the gouache painting done, it’s now time for incorporating some details! I used a variety of pens and markers here. Acrylic markers for the eyelashes and whites of eyes, gel pens for the eggs, and to finish it all off glitter glue for the eye liner and the pink eggs. I considered decorating the eggs a bit more and making them more colorful as Easter Eggs should be, but I figured that may distract away from Little One and her beautiful pink frock and emerald green eyes. Best to keep the painting less chaotic. And here we are!

I’m really loving the vivid colors here. Very Spring-like with lots of positive vibes. With the on-going Covid crisis, it doesn’t feel too celebratory this Easter but hopefully this painting ought to brighten our days more. I further enjoy painting with gouache because their strong vivid shades are amazing. It’s so much fun combining acrylic and gouache as well. Little One looks ever so charming with those colors! I should really use gouache more often.