Goodbye Autumn!

It is now the start of December, and winter is slowly approaching! Typical of autumn, leaves have been falling incessantly with the last of them on their way till the trees are bare. And now Little One is enjoying the most of the pretty yellow and orange piles of fallen leaves on the ground. How pretty and celebratory she looks today, donned with a pink glittery dress and a cute “autumn” hat she’s made! More to be happy about is that after weeks of rain, the sun has been out for a few days too. So adorable that of course I had to paint about this!

The Beginning

It all started out with a page from my Strathmore’s Mixed Media sketchbook filled with splotches of paint. And how did that come about? Whenever I am working on a painting, I typically use another piece of paper as a palette to test, mix or wipe excess paint on so nothing goes to waste. The palette surface is then used to recreate another painting! Once I was ready, I firstly glued a few collage pieces like scrap wrapping paper and tissue wrapping to begin with. Having painted in the flesh-colored round shape to rid of excess paint at the time certainly gives us a good start for the face!

Developing Little One

As I didn’t want to lose the flower wrapping paper in the picture, I thought of Little One in a tall party hat! Negative space was then created in the sky using Golden’s fluid acrylic paint in Ultramarine Blue. What a lovely color! I also wanted to keep the light blue pieces of the collage paper and also worked around it. For the hair, some strands were drawn with purple oil pastel along with the tip of a dropper from Sepia acrylic ink which was then spread with a wet brush. And now I was ready to color the ground. Golden Fluid acrylic in Green Gold was chosen, with a bit of Titan Green to add some opacity. So far looking good!

The rest of the hat was then filled in with fluorescent orange acrylic paint (by ARA) to match the flowers with the rim in gold. I then carefully drew the eyes in with Molotow acrylic pens in brown and white, then reinforced the brown with Quinacridone Azo Nickel Gold with the excess applied on the hair. Now the hair has even more texture! As for the dress, I went for pink although the fluorescent orange was considered to match the hat. However, I thought contrasting the warm tones of the ground with a cooler shade of pink would better balance the painting. Hence, a good choice was magenta by Dina Wakely’s Media acrylic paint from Rangers. And instead, the fluorescent orange was dotted around the ground with my finger to emphasize the autumn. The whites of the eyes and the collar were filled in with Titanium white paint. Almost there!

Finishing Touches

I was not too happy with how transparent the pink was however. Then I decided to introduce some sparkle with pink Izink Diamond glitter paint. It was a bit of trial and error, as I realised I should firstly disguise the dark colors showing through in the bottom layer before applying the glitter paint. Most effective way was firstly a layer of matte pink paint by Sennelier, letting it dry before applying the glitter paint with a palette knife to give a more “bitty” effect. The dress was then lined with pink Marabu Glitter Liner. Then the eyelashes were painted in first with some black marker before being layered on with bronze Stickles glitter glue and dotted with black glitter glue on the edges. And finally, I applied a thin layer of blue Stickles glitter gel on the top right hand corner in the sky. Now I think I’m done here!

Had so much fun with this piece! In fact, I do enjoy working with mixed media especially when recreating from scrap palette paper. It gives me a good start to paint my way through and certainly allows me to recycle what is not being used. I am quite pleased with how this painting turned out now, especially with the colors. And of course, Little One is looking so kawaii and adorable in her pink frock in this autumn background, don’t you agree?