Little One is off to an event today where she is to dress up in fancy costume! Did you know she even sews her stuff? How sweet is that! It’s because going bespoke allows her to choose what she likes and what fits her best. Today, it’s all pretty in splashes of pink for that pretty robe, along with splotches of blue for that groovy crown. And we love the gold bits too. So now a kawaii painting of her proudly posing in her creative masterpiece!
Leftover Paint
Once again, I recreated on paper which was used as a mixing palette and onto which to smear leftover paint. It’s just a small square piece of paper cut out from a mixed media pad, around 20 cm on each side. By chance, the excess paint also included some flesh-colored paint from which the obvious choice was to introduce the head of a character, strategically above that triangular area with a range of pink tones. And the first thing that comes to mind of course is a character with a pink dress… Little One of course!
Developing Negative Space
Once I had an idea of what to paint, I set about outlining the area lightly with pencil. The background was then covered in thick Titanium White paint by ARA to create some negative space around the shape of Little One. I had to add another layer of the white paint for thicker coverage, but not too covered as I still wanted the colors below to somehow show through to make the painting look more interesting. Eventually, her hair was scribbled in with some acrylic Molotow markers and the eyes outlined with black charcoal. So far so cute!
Finishing Up
The eyes were then filled in with acrylic markers, with the lashes gone over with some gold relief paint. For even more effect, I dotted on some gold Holbein’s Acryla Gouache with my fingertips on the dress and created some crown jewels with it. The background however looked a bit plain and hence some craft-punched origami paper flower shapes were incorporated along with a few tiny stars from Ranger’s Stickles glitter gel left on my fingers when I was spreading the gel on her dress. And now that definitely looks magical!
What a great example of how some stunning pieces like this can be developed from a palette of used up paint! For that reason, creating negative space artwork is so much fun especially when you want to maintain some of the elements from the paint. I am very pleased with how this piece turned out and love how the splashes of colors give so much energy. Now very much looking forward to painting more like this and discovering what other fancy costumes Little One will come up with!
My Kawaii Quarter 