PHYAS inspiration

I was going to call this "PYHAS assignment," but it's far enough from the example that I figured I'd call it inspiration instead. The one in the lesson was done on canvas with acrylic paints, but I didn't have a small canvas and wasn't in the mood today to break out the acrylics (they are still sometimes a struggle for me), so I tried to mimic the assignment using watercolor and inks only, with limited success.

First of all, there were supposed to be stencils in the background and later in the foreground, but trying to do stencils using watercolor gives an inexact result unless you use them thickly and "pounce" them on with a flathead brush, which can defeat the purpose of them dropping to the background. So the swirly ones that comprise the light source worked pretty well, as did the splats behind her head, but the leafy branch turned into a hot mess.

I was a bit heavy-handed with the pencil and didn't remember to pick it up with my kneaded eraser before painting, so some of the pencil lines were preserved that shouldn't have been, notably the forehead line.

Finally, I broke out the gold paint to do her earring and then something came over me and I started splashing it around thinking it would work for the highlights, which it did not—it just proved a distraction.

So—oh well, it's a somewhat pretty picture that I will do better another time. I was happy with the effect of the stencil representing the light on her upturned face, especially the stripey bits; and I was okay with her hair, especially the tiny bits of green showing through.

"Basking"—pencil, watercolors, and acrylic inks on toned tan mixed media paper, approx. 9x12 inches.