New Year Princess

I put a light wash using naples yellow, magenta, and a bit of cad yellow hue, artisan paints thinned with odourless thinner, on a 24x16 canvas. I drew my picture on with watercolour pencils. I lightly put in some features and skin tones on the arms and feet - I found this difficult with such a skin toned background and should have used a different colour for the wash. The dress is velvety and I tried to acheive this look with my brushstrokes and mixing the paint on the canvas - I used alizarin crimson with cad yellow hue, and some dioxanine purple in the deeper shadows. I made a black for her shoes - can't remember what colours I used - ones that were on my pallette. Then I painted in the throw she is sitting on and filled in most of the couch back. This was all done in a 4 hour painting session.

Hi Sofie
I am always reluctant to make comments cos I haven't had any proper training. But I am not sure where the light is coming from although the neck shadow would indicate from above. If the young lady is sitting then the light would be upon her legs above the knee. With the lower legs more in shadow. I like the wallpaper and would endeavour to keep it. I think with a portrait of a small child delicacy is the keynote and major differences between the skin and the background you have might best be avoided.
hope this is helpful
Jack

Sofie, I think you're doing great! I'm really enjoying your paintings with figures. How the heck did you get such perfect lines in the background?

Thanks Kopo and Janet.

Kopo, this picture is in very early stages still, so things will not remain as they are seen. Thanks for all your good advice - I'll keep it in mind as I continue with the work.

How's it going Sofie? Looking forward to seeing what you've done with this. She's charming!

Thanks Callie. I missed taking photos of the stages, but I've worked a few times just on the background. It's night so the windows are quite dark. I'm going to add some highlights on the upper portion of the windows. The black is not uniform at all but made from 3 or 4 different combinations of black. I took this pic this evening with a flash so there's some glare. After I painted in the dark windows, I filled in the cut out snowflakes. The real ones are made of construction paper so I gave them a flatter texture to give more of the feeling that they are taped on top of the glass. I think I'll make a more yellow orange for the orange ones because they're a bit to close in colour to the red ones. The window frame I put in last. I'm going to glaze some more shadows into it. I will get back to the girl when I've got the background finished, or when I get a big block of time that I can devote to it. Life has been hectic here .

What a fun painting. Love all the festive colors!

Your painting is coming along great! Looking froward to seeing your next update!

I like the way you have toned down the red of the dress. It is fun to watch the progress.

Judy

Sorry Sophie but
I think you have emphasised too much the background and the support blanket etc. This will possibly make it difficult for you to bring out the focal point which I think is the little girl.
Hope you don't mind my comments.
Best wishes
Jack

Thanks Jack. I still have more work to do on the girl, and add some lighter glare to the windows, so that might change the overall effect.

I had a very hard time with the face because I usually like to paint more pensive looks, not happy grins. I probably spent as much time on the face as on the whole rest of the painting. I added more shadows and highlights to the dress and background, and reflective glare onto parts of the window. The flash gives a bit of glare because I took the pic this evening.

closeup of face without the flash. Sorry - it doesn't come up any bigger.

It looks great. Could we see the full image without flash please? It does appear that you have succeeded in retaining the figure as the focal point.
Best wishes
Jack

Sofie, the face looks great! Faces are the toughest to do especially on figures. If you try for too much detail it will not work and not enough it won't look right. You hit the rite note.

Love the turned in feet.

Thanks guys!
I like the turned in feet too - that's part of what drew me to paint this. I wasn't happy with the face, though, so I scraped it off and tried again. It was just too smiley for my liking. I squinched the eyes a bit this time and made the smile a tad subtler. I'll see if I can live with it now.

I see what your saying regarding the face it does look better. Much more relaxed and natural.

So nice to finally see a face on her! I like the subdued smile - looks very natural.

Thanks Janet and Callie.
I'm not totally satisfied with her, but I agree she looks more natural now. She's supposed to be in my show of window paintings which opens on Wednesday, so I'd better leave her for now.