I’ve really challenged myself with this painting!
To start with, for inspiration, I looked through Etsy for models wearing flower crowns.
When I found a beautiful model that I wanted to paint, I used an app to turn the photo into line art.
I printed the line art to use for tracing…
Just a note:
I use cradled wood panels as my painting canvas for a few reasons:
1. I just prefer the feel of painting on the smooth wood
2. I dislike the textured surface of the stretched cloth canvases
3. Less worry about storage… When I last moved, despite trying to pack carefully, some of my canvas paintings were pierced and ruined, which was very disappointing.
Getting Started
Quite by accident, I found that starting my paintings with a pink decoupage background gives a nice base skin tone, which I prefer over a painted pink background.
This particular pale pink napkin is a Spritz brand napkin. I prefer to use this, as opposed to, a blush colored gift wrapping tissue paper because one layer of napkin gives the same tone as two or three layers of blush tissue paper.
Prepaing the cradled wood panel
To start, I decoupaged the cradled wood panel with the pale pink napkin (white backing layers removed).
Next, I used Mona Lisa brand graphite paper to transfer my design onto my wood canvas.
Once my design was transferred, I painted the background using four different green paints, including a top coat of a glitter paint.
After painting the background, I began painting her face.
To avoid too much paint build up in places, I painted slowly, using small strokes, alternating between light and dark skin tones.
As Frida Kahlo was an influence in this painting, I used the Frida Kahlo style unibrow.
I then began the hair and flower crown.
Next, I painted the shirt with a watered down titanium white and mixed a pale grey to denote the folds and shadows in the fabric.
Lastly, I wanted the green background to look worn like in an old colonial era house.
To accomplish this, I used a salon nail file and a rough, damp wash clothe to distress the green paint around the edges, on the sides, and in a few other places.
And she is finished!
Here are the paints I used:
I forgot to take a photo of my paint brushes.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this painting!