Stitched watercolor portrait

This weeks lesson dovetailed nicely with one of my 2019 goals, becoming more proficient at combining segments from multiple photos into one.  That resulted in learning GIMP a bit more being one of my goals.  Danielle Mack, who taught one of the other earlier pencil segments, also reminded of the importance of doing both color swatches and thumbnails.  I do know these things, but while I spend a good deal of time on my drawings, I blow right by doing the other things and hurry off to start painting.

Danielle, as well as others I have been watching on YouTube, recommend doing inspiration boards and the perfect place to get inspiration is, of course, Pinterest.   I have to admit I haven't been visiting or using Pinterest all that much as one can really only do so much social media and still have a life.     Yes, one of the concerns is that you can't outrageously copy direct.   However, many folks have said they have had success if you ask, you are granted permission to use photos, so we'll see.   

So went out, established a couple more new boards (headdresses, jewelry and art nouveau) and found a lot of inspiration to put together this piece.  Can you tell what parts I used from each photo?  

The last photo is the original inspiration photo and I just kind of tweaked her from there - I think you can still see elements of the original photos, just a bit more refined I think.  That deviating from the original photo has been a big break through in thinking for me.   So many of the teachers work with stylized faces and draw much from memory - it was funny for me to finally be released from thinking it has to be exact.  Not sure what my style will become, but I had lots of fun really deviating from the model playing with the thumbnails.   So the thumbnail actually became the preview in some respects.

Here are my thumbnails, well is larger than a thumbnail.   I couldn't do my color palette choices on it as this is regular sketch paper and knew it would buckle beyond belief, so did a couple of swatches and a bit of color pencil.    I am getting a mixed media sketchbook, thicker paper, that I am hoping to be able to use to have a more permanent record of what I am doing as I try to develop this habit.  Have to admit here that I didn't use GIMP in trying to put this together, but that will be something I will be trying to do as I go forward.

Another tip I learned that made a tremendous difference is how to hold the brush.  In watercolor if you want to blend as you go you hold the brush flat down on the paper as you go, only color is on the tip, and you automatically blend/wet it out as you go with the clean water that resides in the mid/back of the brush.   There is a time when you do need harder edges and I guess that is one more thing I am going to have to learn about is appropriate edges.

As always love hearing your thoughts and suggestions - and yes, Val, my mind is getting more quirky every day!!  But, ya know, I'm just letting it go and there really is something to this second childhood that I am living.

Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look at this long post.