Watercolor Child Portrait Finished

C'est fini! And I am really proud of this one.  It's called "Quilted" and I actually made the quilt wrapped around my son. I wish more of it showed because it was a cat design that caught my eye about 8 years ago. It was paper pieced and took many hours. I've only made a few quilts and this one had a gazillion pieces and tons of quilting. I will definitely try to use it in a future painting.

Each painting is a learning experience. I have learned quite a bit about working with earth colors lately. This painting was much more subdued than others that I've done. I wanted to go darker and I also stayed true to the quilt colors. Lots of raw and burnt umber mixed with ultramarine blue. Raw umber is a very handy color. I use it a lot in hair and I actually used a similar painting technique on the quilt as I do with hair. Basically you're working dry in wet and layering and building the colors up light to dark. I also did a little wet in wet but not sloppy wet so I could control it some. This way you get soft edges.

For the background I took advantage of the paint (raw umber mostly). It's a granulating pigment so you're bound to get some flecks of paint that settle. I let it react with my damp background and do what it wanted to. I also painted the sofa while the background was dark hence the crazy edges. I love it. My husband hates it. But I told him it's better to leave those things than keep going back over and making a mess. Blooms and backwashes can be beautiful things .... It's art after all.