Pink Petals

Another way of catching up on the blog a bit is to just post more, so two in one day (if you missed the previous one due to my posting twice in a day being an unusual occurrence, it's this one here). Like the last one I'll be saying as little as possible in order to get it done in one go. This post's subject has been seen in a lesser way before, in the last speedpaint post. I said I'd get to the results soon; this is the post about it, so let's see the result.

As mentioned in the speedpaint post, this is loosely based on this photo, which I've since learned is a photograph of Argentinian actress Dolores Fonzi.  It doesn't look much like her, but it wasn't meant to - I just liked how her hair looked, but even that's been changed a bit, as you can see.  This doesn't mean I won't do an actual portrait of her some time in the future though.

So the starting point was the original unfinished speedpaint.  The first step was to do some cleanup, and start fixing some things that bothered me about her features, especially how puffy she looked around the right side of her face and chin (it's not an ugly thing particularly, it's just not what I wanted).  You can see where I did this by just painting a darker area over there, without yet matching it to her hair color.  Revising her face continued through most of the following images - I'm fairly pleased with the end result.

More revision in the left picture, but not much else.  On the right I've started to define her hair and shirt  a little more, as well as some further refinements of her features.  At this point her shirt is based on another photograph, but the end result was changed quite a lot.  I also decided on a background that was a little bolder in color.  This was supposed to be temporary, but that color made it all the way into the finished piece.

More or less completed her hair  on the left here, and added a little more color into her face.  At this point I decided I wanted her ear to be in front of her hair, which required some repainting of the hair around there, and of course painting her ear.  I didn't have a direct reference for that, so it's based on an ear seen from a different angle, and under different lighting.  I also changed the color of her shirt from teal, to a more standard blue.  Mostly I just preferred it that way, but it also matches the background better, meaning the shirt draws the eye away from her face less.

And here are some revisions of her shirt, so it no longer looks anything like the photo it was based on.  I also polished up her arm, and put it into more of an obvious shadow.

And that, apart from the addition of an earring, greener eyes, some more shirt polish and the addition of  details in  the background, is basically it.  Yes, it seems like that last step was quite a lot, but it took less time than the original failed speedpaint.  Most of the background consists of those petals for example, the most complex of which is maybe eight brushstrokes; most of them were just two or three.

Usually I just leave it at that, but I thought in this case I would put the completed one side by side with the one I started with for the sake of comparison.  I think she came quite a long way in the couple of days I spent on her.  I could have spend some more time on it and polished further, but I thought she'd be a good entry for another ArtRage contest, and the time was almost up at this point, so I submitted her and crossed my fingers.  She didn't win (honourable mention though), but another one of my pieces I'd submitted for the heck of it did come in joint-second.  Personally I think it's one of the prettier things I've ever painted.