Ode to Women

Olga Furman Art is sponsoring a 30-day portrait challenge (one a day for a month) in honor of Women's History Month. Deb Weiers posted it on her page, and I thought it looked intriguing. We start today and finish on March 8th, which is International Women's Day. Olga is providing one theme plus five possible reference photos per day, some with complete demos by guest artists, some with "WIP" photos, and some just the reference. I didn't think I had enough to do with my weekly class, so I signed on for this challenge as well (HA!). #AnOdeToWomenChallenge

The first day's theme is "nurses," and we had five photos, some old, some new, some black and white or sepia-tone, some in color, and some different styles were demonstrated. I chose to paint from the Florence Nightingale reference, since she IS the mother of organized nursing.

The photo was in black and white, so I decided on a monochromatic treatment. But I didn't want to use black/gray, so I gave the paper a wash of pale turquoise, and then painted her portrait in indigo blue ink, following up with shadows and contours in purple. You would think that purple would be the darkest, but the indigo is actually more dense, so I went back in with some indigo for the heaviest shadows as well.

I'm pretty pleased with this, both as a likeness capture and as a piece of art. I thought afterwards about going back with a part-purple wash for the background, coming in from the corners with the purple and then shading into turquoise again to keep it light around the figure, but I didn't think of this until after I did the lettering, and although the black is water-resistant, the white accents are not, so I left it as is.

Pencil, Daler Rowney inks, Uniball Vision pen, white Signo gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress (rough) watercolor paper, about 8.5x11 inches.