30 Faces/30 Days and a birthday

I have been painting so infrequently lately (because of all my extenuating health issues) that I scarcely remember what I'm doing with a paintbrush in my hand! But things are beginning to be resolved (stone gone, stent out, AFib under control with pills, legs decreasing in girth a bit with new Beltwells), so I ambitiously decided to sign up for Sktchy's 30 Faces/30 Days challenge in watercolor. And of course messed it up from Day One! I didn't look at which year I was on, and ended up doing Day 23 from 2021 instead of Day 1 from 2023. Oh, well, I enjoyed it, which is the main point. I'll get back on track tomorrow.

It's a looser, wet-in-wet kind of painting that I don't often employ, mostly because I'm kind of a control freak, but I do like it when it turns out well. This one's not bad, but I've done better. I'll have to work on this technique some more. I tend to go too far and over-work it, and that's the death knell to the spontaneous look.

SY123_Leeza: pencil and watercolor on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, about 8x12 inches.

Yesterday I did something in a style more typical to me: Kara Bullock had a birthday, and I decided to do a birthday portrait based on a cute photo she had taken of herself in her studio. This is Uniball pen, in Deb Weiers's double-line style, painted in watercolor, about 8.5x10 inches.

I purposely made space next to her face so I could add birthday greetings in type in Photoshop Express when I was finished.

Hopefully there will be 30 more faces to follow—we'll see how it goes!