Where to Now

Where to now. mmmmm.

I've been working my butt off on this painting - left the other couple half-started orphans aside.... and have been struggling to set this one free.

There is lots that's not "quite" working yet - I wanted her body to look like a decoupage image but all the fluidity is gone from the original sketch... I don't know if I should have altered the left should/arm. That might be the problem - I like her face... took me quite a lot of work to get her expression the way I wanted it... The collage bits on her torso are mostly buried now from trying to give her body more contour with paint and gesso (for transparency)... I want more collage and less definition... More fluidity... the negative space is developing in my head - I know I want it to look like a "surreal garden"... Well, I will start by drinking a cup of coffee and pondering my plan of attack for the day...

Silhouette - I used Micaceous Iron Oxide for the first time. It's gritty, great for mixed media - like pastels. (They'll adhere better to the MIO than to reg. acrylics.)

I used solely pastels to define her hair, she's outlined with gold acrylic.
I collaged pages from a child's encyclopedia - the inscription reads three boys' names and "Christmas 1960" - There's a chapter about the "Fruits of the Earth" I used the pages from that chapter... they were calling my name.

Moving on....