Her thoughts darted in and out like little fish

I usually paint my portrait pictures with a combination of guouche, water colour pencils/crayons and or using artists pencils. However, I enrolled in Portraits with Pam Carriker, which shows you how to paint and shade using acrylics. I find water colour so much more forgiving, but doing classes is all about stepping out of your comfort zone.

I decided to work on a spread in my Mole that I had previously added colour to (using up paint on my brush). At this stage I thought that I might like to draw a fairy, and experimented with swirly, curly wings.

Initial sketch

I try to incorportate as many experimental elements into each page. I decided to use an unusual colour pallette (well for me anyway). I wanted to use a bright green with the pink, and also incorporate orange.The first step was to overlay the page with green.

Green paint overlay

I have watched a video tutorial on adding alcohol to acrylic paints for a lovely effect and wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately I could not get it to work, so instead, gently rubbed over the green to reveal the pink beneath. I thought that perhaps the technique was not working because I was spraying my alcohol (100% Isopropyl alcohol) whereas it was "dripped" in the tutorial. Well I got a little carried away with my dripping....Lucky alcohol evaporates very quickly.

What happens when you pour instead of dripping.

I added a little more pink on the left hand side for balance

Colour Balancing.

Now I am ready to get down to the nitty gritty of the tutorial. I coloured her hair, and covered her neck and face with titan buff. I also added some burned umber to the edges of the pages. Note: RHS is not that dark. The page has curled from the moisture, and so threw a shadow when I photographed it.

Foundation colour added to face and hair

Using burned umber mixed with titan buff, I started to add the shading. I also coloured her shirt.At this stage, I also decided that I no longer wanted to do a fairy (incase you were wondering).

Adding shading

I continued adding more shading and added a print to her shirt. I also added her irises so that she no longer looks like zombie girl.

Final details added.

And finaly, I added my journaling. In the end, after much cursing, I actually liked the process and am going to practise painting with acrylics.