Back to Work--Part 1

"Lady in Waiting"
6.5X9"
Pen, ink, and watercolor

Now that my little noveling adventure is over, it's time to get back to work. I have a couple of projects that I put on pause while I wrote. This lovely little thing was one of them.

After testing several colors with this line drawing (see earlier "Ladies in Waiting" post), I decided to do something slightly different. I still wanted to paint the dress red, even though the dress that inspired this whole thing was black. But instead of sticking with a single color for the whole picture, I decided to work in some greens. I liked the effect much better than any of the colors I had used previously.

What I love most of all about this painting, though, is the happy little accident that occurred with the tree. When I started painting the leaves, I initially let some of the strokes go over the branches. I didn't like how that turned out once the paint dried, and I was afraid that I'd ruined the whole thing. However, I decided to go back over the trunk with another color. As I started to brush water over the branches in preparation for the new color, I noticed that the leaf strokes started to disappear and merge with the trunk color. Hah! There was no need to even mix up the new color. I already had the effect I wanted. So hurray for happy accidents!