Magnolia Blossom acrylic portrait magnolia flowers

I also am not getting very far with my Gimp, I sort of have a watermark but not right and completely transparent, then I can't save it in anything but Gimp file format which the rest of my computer doesn't read and I couldn't upload into this file.  So I still have a lot of work there, but will press on, have seen at least thousands of YouTube videos and still dumb as a post.  Duh!!

 

Morning all, getting ready for my run and thought I'd post what I have done which appears to be very little, but took a heck of a lot of time.  Busy work week so not a lot of art time.  Been working on the snout and it has taken quite a bit of time.  Not sure if this made a difference but worked on a soft spongy surface for these short strokes so the pencil couldn't stay on the surface long but bounced up.  Now that I am moving to longer hair again I'll go back to a harder surface.  Not sure there is anything to that but I thought there was and I need all the help I can get to try to get on paper what I want to see.  Also this time for my cover page that I rest my right palm on a using a clear acetate sheet instead of paper and really like that a lot as I can see through to the painting. 

 

Also I am really experiencing wax bloom, especially in the dark black areas, went to using watercolor Prismacolor black but still it wants to gray out on me.  So I am trying adjusting some of the black areas with black gel pen, same concept as the white gel pen for the whiskers. But need to figure out how to prevent this on the next piece, might try a toothier paper to see if that helps.  I am also polishing the black background almost daily to see if I can get the wax layers that are coming to the top off the piece.  I guess at the end I may have to fix the background which concerns me in a piece this hard I'd hate to ruin it at the end of hours of work.

 

Critiques and comments are welcomed

 

Will post again tomorrow afternoon, as we have a holiday, so a long weekend, (got hot weather again Renate so little porch time) what I've done both on this piece and also a picture of my friend's little girl that I am working on in graphite.  Actually using a different pencil type also from Prismacolor, Ebony, kind of a cross I think between graphite and charcoal.  This is where I am using the TP to see if I can get lighter and more delicate skin tones.  Thus far I have put on multiple layers and not sure I am getting anything better than straight charcoal or graphite, but will picture it tomorrow and see it on screen and maybe have a different perspective.