NEW WIP: Girl with Flowers

Arguably, too much of my time is spent scrolling Pinterest boards. My usual excuse is collecting reference pictures, which led me to Flower, photographed by A-Finch on DeviantArt. I thought the muted tones and fragile, but sharp angles in the figure interesting, but obviously expanded the colour palette.

Most times I start with a charcoal, especially if I'm working on canvas. Charcoal can be rubbed off with a wet tissue and is easier to remove than rubbing pencil out of dents in canvas with an eraser. Sometimes the charcoal mixes a with the oils, but it tends not to bother me and the tones can be kind of interesting to mix.

I was taught in school to start with the background, but even then, the first layer isn't usually the last one I leave on. Between the last two images the bed sheets have been reworked and smoothed out of focus a little, to create the idea of depth.

I ended up using blue and even green strokes through the figure's hair, referencing the foreground and leaves. The intensity of the green in the leaves was also pleasantly surprising. I was slightly concerned it would look too jarring, but I really like that it acts as an accent and helps make the flowers more of a focal point.

The flowers are definitely giving me the most trouble - it seems quite easy to make a mess of oils at that fine a detail. At the end of the day, sometimes it's best to walk away from a painting, than overwork it out of frustration.

Image Reference: https://www.deviantart.com/a-finch/art/Flower-453454292