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.

Ella's Paintover: Cherish

Well, it finally worked! After trying to upload this image for about an hour, I almost gave up. Anyway, this is only my first, ROUGH attempt at painting Miss Ella. I thought I would try this one first. You can click on the image to see a larger version (I think).

I am in the beginning stages of another image of her. Sharon (her grandma) was kind enough to send me a contact sheet of some beautiful photos of the family. There is a whole page of just Ella, and the next one I'm really spending a lot of time on is one where she's laying like she is in this one, with a black background (which I'll change) and she has feather angel wings laying on her back! Believe it or not, I'm going to include my own wings on that one. I want to really spend a lot of time getting it right, so it will be awhile. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to keep practicing.

I have also started another canvas in my bridal series. It is really special and there is a very ornate embellishment that took me a whole day to make! Like the next one of Ella, it will also take awhile. I'm going very slowly on both of them. My perfectionist is starting to kick in with those two.

Today's little canvas was done using a color photocopy; that's one option that Lisa Bebi mentions in her articles. I'm not sure, but I think I prefer to work with the black and white images and paint over those. I am learning a few tricks in painting the faces, so my next ones will reflect that. I liked playing with this one, though. I added a little blanket for Ella to lay on. It was a piece of a knitted scarf. I don't knit (anymore), so I have no idea where it came from. I think it was part of a scrapbook kit at one time or another. Anyway, it was the perfect shade of blue, which is the shade of the blanket she was laying on in her photo. I had some tiny satin roses left over from another kit and decided to place those on top of her. The original photo had a pink ribbon tied in a big bow. Painting that didn't translate very well, so I improvised with the roses!

She has such a perfect little face and I was afraid to touch it. I only dabbed a little bit of Zinc White on it here and there, since that paint is translucent. It's a challenge for me to jump right in and try something with paint. The think I keep telling myself is I have a copier and I can always make more copies if I don't like the way something is turning out.

I'm also not a very good photographer, and that's starting to show in my pictures. I have no clue how to set any of the settings for my digital camera. Everything is on "automatic" which doesn't always come out so well. I did a lot of image adjustments before I could even get the picture to look good enough to upload! Such are the problems of a novice in everything having to do with technology! I'll get it eventually. Did I mention that I'm very impatient? Hence, the 10 or so tries in uploading today's image. Oh well, back to work. I thought I would post this while waiting for another layer of paint to dry.

Oh, and GrayAngi, THANK YOU for your kind comments! It's nice to get such great encouragement! I really appreciate it. Until next time...