Dahlia

Dahlia
Acrylic, beeswax, heavy gel (gloss), mica on paper

I was so happy with the way Krista's portrait turned out that I wanted to try and recreate the process and end result on a personal piece. Dahlia uses some reference images, namely the actually dahlia flower line art from Dover, and French court documents. (I believe a gentleman is being fined 9 francs for trespassing. ) I absolutely love old handwriting, back in the day people used to really care about their penmanship.
I used the acrylics almost like watercolors, building up a lot of watery washes over and over again. The end result was a very translucent almost airy feeling that I really like. I painted her hair an almost-carnation pink. I love pink hair. But no matter how much I fiddled with my scanner settings, and later with photoshop, it seems the only way to get that pink back is to physically paint it into the image again. I can't wait to borrow a camera and take really good pictures of all my paintings. (And my dolls and pottery and things I've been working on that I can't scan.)