Francisca

Francisca is a sweet little girl that I could put on paper over and over.  We recently helped her and her family when she had appendicitis. 

Here's the start of my project:

For my paintings I use Prismacolor pencils and their Artstix for backgrounds or other large spaces.  Then I usually blend the colors with Turpenoid.  I'm still in the experimental stage with using Turpenoid (so, still making a few mistakes) but I'm really enjoying this.  I love how I can turn fairly light applications of pencil into rich, creamy surfaces.  It also means that I can work faster, as I don't have to be quite as careful to have perfectly even strokes and the colors will still melt together well. 

For this picture I decided to remove the distracting stripped background and created this lovely blue as the start of the project.  This really matched the reflections off the side of Francisca's face, so I was trying to draw out the blues in her skin tones.  I used a lot of reds and blues in this and I was pleased with the way it came together.

And here's the finished portrait: