Shhh...Angel Sleeping!

After many false starts and much tweaking, here is what Little Ella's final version turned out to be. What I learned: faces are not easy, especially if you have a personal stake in it. With a magazine photo you can cut yourself a little slack. But, if you know the subject (or in this case their parents and grandparents!) you want it to be a little more polished.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this one. If you click on the photo you can see the large version. You can also see that the face is still a little rough. With more experience, I'm sure I'll pick up a few tricks. Also, I need to stock up on some more flesh toned paints. I'm pretty limited in my stash right now. I'll remedy that tomorrow.

By the way, the angel wing was a great find! The original photo had little Ella with a beautiful angel wing on her back. That, unfortunately, did not translate very well on the photocopy, so I made it my mission to hunt down an angel wing. I almost shouted out for joy when I came across two of these at Hobby Lobby in their dolls section. Ooh, there are a lot of goodies to be had there. Also, the jewelry section at Michael's craft store has some gorgeous crystals and stones. They didn't photograph very well, but I've sprinkled very small Swarovski crystals throughout Ella's canvas to give it that extra special touch. When the light hits the canvas they DO sparkle!

I made a lot of progress on things last night. I finished my digital altered book on the fairy castles! Yay! I've sent it off to Artella and now will wait word that they've converted it into book form. Stay tuned for that one...I'm real excited about it. I was up until the wee hours this a.m. finishing it. Thank goodness I didn't send it off until this afternoon. There were a few errors I would have been upset to see in the final form.

I painted two more 8 x 10 canvasses in background colors that should blend pretty well with my next subjects. Those will be a surprise! Ahh...so many models, so little time. Back to work.