HerStory Workshop

Since I never took art classes beyond grade 10 in high school, I occasionally sign up for online art courses to stretch my creative muscles and learn new techniques. For example, last spring I registered for She Art 3 hosted by Christy Tomlinson as well as the Art of Spring by Junelle Jacobsen. This month, I signed up for the HerStory workshop hosted by Danielle Daniel. I really love painting girls and these workshops really help me develop my own process and style. Later, I'll show you a progression of my own girls, but for today, I wanted to show you what I've been working on for HerStory.

The first week, we started with sketching girls. I'll show you more later since I have many sketches, but these are the ones I took further along with this course:

I don't think animal ears will become my "thing" but I really loved how these little ladies turned out.

Week two involved backgrounds, which I love to create but somehow managed not to take any picture of... I do remember the layers I used though:

1. collage (various scrapbooking papers)
2. paint (mostly Golden or Amsterdam acrylics)
3. Neocolor II crayons for texture
4. oil pastels for more texture
5. splatter of India ink

And I did snap a few photos of my workspace Saturday night right before sitting down and getting to week 3, painting girls. Pat was gone for a concert and I was going to unleash some creativity:

I started with the yellow/brown backgrounds. I used the following for my girls:

• paint by Golden: titan buff, raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber light, paynes grey, red oxide, Indian yellow hue
• paint by Amterdam: naphthol red medium, permanent red violet, permanent blue violet
• Venetian acrylic gesso
• Golden soft gel matte medium

This girl with the fawn / calf ears will be titled "Wary" because that's the feeling she embodies for me. I haven't settled on a title for the antlered girl, but I'm leaning towards "Thoughtful" or possibly something along the lines of watchful / attentive / curious.  

Once I finished the girls, I added some permanent blue violet dots to the background to tie in their dresses (they look black here but they are a very dark purple). I also added in some green (Golden chromium oxide green) for contrast so that the girls would pop off the background a bit better. This morning, I added in some subtle doodling to define the edges. I'm tempted to add in some words, but I'm not sure. They feel finished to me so I'm going to sit on it for a bit.

As for the other two backgrounds - they're sketched out and waiting for paint:

If I don't get to it this afternoon (I'm preparing this post on Sunday) I have all day Monday and Tuesday to be creative since I took both days off - a much needed break!