A place away from darkness

I finished my painting! It might not look much changed for an outsider, but those last details were a lot of work! I'm so happy that I discovered Paint Party Friday. It really makes me force myself to paint at least a little each week. Not that I don't like painting, far from it!, but you know how it is: life sometimes gets in the way and before you know it a few weeks have passed and you didn't paint.

Well, with PPF not anymore! Even though I have been really busy this week, I painted and it sure felt good!

I'll show you the process from start to finish:

This is the way it looked when I took it out of my closet. Just some leftover paint scraped out over it, and a sand background (fine sand mixed with primer and put on the painting with a palette knife.

Finally used some of my stencils (I have a whole bunch but rarely use them)

Doodled a bit on top (because the sand background makes the surface really rough, I used different techniques than the ones I use with my Flora-paintings)

Doodled some more and tried some drips

Contrary to my intuitive paintings, I didn't look for something to jump out at me. Instead I use a sketch from my sketchbook that I wanted to turn into a painting.

Started with the figure but thought it was too dark

So I lightened it up ☺

Starting on the face

Started working the background but changed my mind several times. Tried painting waves: blah, tried painting lines: blah, painted a bird: yes!

Finally decided on painting corals. This is where I stopped last week.

Thought it'd be fun to add some bubbles

Worked a bit more on the fish and the corals (and boy that was a lot of work!)

Gave the bird some legs, finished the eyes, gave her an earring and used my white paint pen to bring out the details in her hair. Although, now that I see it next to the other one I'm not sure I should've done that.

Oh well ....

And since I discovered sketching again, here's another sketch:

Sketch with graphite and coloured pencils, then scanned it and in Photoshop pasted a picture of an in-progress painting as background.

I'm going to make a calendar out of these sketches with painted background, and add some words to it. But I'm not sure which service to use. Does anybody have experience with Redbubble, CafePress, Zazzle or Lulu for making calendars? Tips and advice are very welcome!

Well, thanks for your visit! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday, be sure to check out all the beautiful work on there.

And once again: I wish you a wonderful Friday and a restful playful weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥