PLAYING WITH THE QUEEN OF HEARTS

I watched the Carla O'Connor DVD again (Figure Design in Gouache: The Process) from Creative Catalyst. And gessoed (white) on a 1/4 sheet of 140# watercolor paper. Then began, like Carla does in the DVD, with watercolor crayons and drew my design on there, putting the color in with a wet brush smooshing the crayon lines. Then began with real color (the crayon was just a brown color). Have worked on this, off and on, for a few days - rare for me to spend this kind of time thinking and looking. Here's where I am and it's NOT finished because I need to have more design content than I have right now. I need to get some patterns in there and some better dark values and whites (you can lift out the color on gessoed paper IF you don't use staining colors).

I'm going back to my theme of hearts I had a while back. And this is my Queen of Hearts. Have some other ideas cooking right now, too.

This is the sketch I did while watching the O'Connor DVD the first time (has nothing to do with anything she was doing - just something that came up while I was working with figure + design).

Today, I'm going to the Taft Museum of Art to see Emil Robinson's paintings on display there. I'll let you know how wonderful these are (because, of course, they will be wonderful -- Emil is a fine draftsman and a real artist, creating works of such beauty and grace when he paints the figure.)