Secrets Mixed media portrait woman

Secrets

Well this turned out to be a very interesting experiment.  When I got interested in doing the mixed media portraits I found that in the journaling community many folks had been incorporating figure collages into their work.  One of the reasons why is they used this method is that didn't actually draw/paint portraits, but wanted figures or faces in their work.  Also by painting over the magazine image you get another image and I guess the rule is that if more than 40% of the picture or image was changed, then you are not plagiarizing their photo, work or ideas.

For someone beginning to paint portraits it is a good way to learn about shading the face, painting over a photo.  Especially in black/white, you really see the light and darks on the facial planes.  So this started out as a black/white photo in an ad from one of my junk magazines, on a bit thicker paper.

I put on the abstract background with acrylic using stencils (adding paint onto paper through the stencil to make design (this is the traditional way), and making negative stencils, paint section of paper and then wipe paint off using the stencil with baby wipes), pieces of napkins were also used.  I then collaged the figure from the magazine and painted her using acrylics.  Then I added the branches as the finishing touches.   From the look on her face I thought she looked like she was going shhhhh - like she had a secret.

Thanks much for stoping by and taking a look.