Fern (the Fairy) challenging myself to paint a face!

Hi all

I love drawing faces....but I'm really not good at colouring them in! I Drew this face a couple of months ago on a page which I'd used to mop up paints from another project (as you do).

Anyway I decided to try and paint Fairy Fern's face!
Oh my goodness; I ended up making so many mistakes and with so many layers it was hilarious. But I kept going (even through the part where I completely messed up her hair and made her look like 'Wolverine' ) until I had a face I as fairly happy with - then I made myself stop before I messed it up again! I'm really glad I had a go.

Here are pics of the stages and details of the beautiful DecoArt Media Acrylic paints I used.

Here was the original sketch on a base journal page...I really liked it, very scared to paint it!

First layers of paint....eeeek.

Hair and face were a mixture of Titan Buff and Quinacridone Gold; but just a touch of buff mixed with the quin G for the hair and the reverse for the skintone.

For the next layer of skintone I added a tiny amount of cerulean blue and for the final rosy layer I added in a tiny amount of Quinacridone Red. I used a brush and then my fingers to blend in the paints.



Lips were painted magenta and titanium white with a few white highlights.

Then I started on the eyes. I liked the colour behind the eyes and it was again very similar to the colour I'd achieved with the buff and quin gold during the process of playing with hair colours.

So I added the white then fIIled in with the gold/hazel colour where needed and added tiny black lines in the iris' and for the lashes and lids. Once the eyed were dry I added a couple of dots of Titanium white to bring them to life a little.



I went back over the hair using just quin gold,I kept adding depth with more colour (burnt umber and burnt sienna).

Then I decided to bring the hair around the face a little more - BIG mistake and here was born Wolverine. It did make me laugh when I looked at it properly!

 So this was the beginning of "Wolverine recovery"! Basically taking the hair back with Titan Buff. But then I had to repaint the whole face again to get another even skin tone and it wasn't as nice as before (but it was ok!).

To paint the fairy wings I added Titanium White using quite heavy brush strokes for texture. Then I 'dripped and tipped' with a very water Cerulean Blue to create the veined look of the fairy  wings. 

I used the left over blue to fill in gaps around the edge of the page and to frame the top section. 

The leaf was several layers of paint again to give a bit of depth. Mixing PhthaloGreen-Blue, Green Gold, Prussion Blue Hue and Titanium white

Handwritten words added with Decoupage glue and Voilla! Little old Fern is as ready as she'll ever be!

Good luck with projects you're not sure about - the moral of the story is KEEP GOING!

Have fun

Suz

x