A little splash of color

I started this piece last January for the Dark Fantasy Art Show on the FAE Forum (http://www.faeforum.com). While she never made it on there, I'm hoping to have her done in time for the Beyond the Veil artshow over at http://www.fantasyartshow.com

Here was the initial sketch



After that, I did a 'final' sketch onto watercolor paper and started painting her - and hated it. I rarely start over on a piece. If I decide I don't like it, its usually because of design and composition, not color and feel. So I trashed it. At this point I was really thankful that I had done the initial sketch in a sketchbook instead of the watercolor paper, because I was able to go back with graphite paper and recreate the image. At that stage, I decided that there was far too much open space behind her, so I sought to fill in some of the negative space. That brought me to this point...



She sat untouched for about a month after that. In august I was determined to work on her so I got out the masking fluid and started masking the important areas to keep clean. And once she dried, she sat there until mid-September...lol Just as the masking fluid was beginning to yellow, I started working on her again only to discover that I didn't ink her before I laid the masking fluid down!!! D'oh!!!! So then the slow process of carefully peeling up the fluid so I could preserve all the graphite lines I could - because they were coming off with the fluid :( . I inked as I went and while she didn't turn out EXACTLY how the original sketch looked, she's really darn close. I was able to start laying down watercolor shortly thereafter, and I'm liking her so far. She's still far from finished, but she's off to a decent start :)



Comments and critiques are welcome :)