A Face in Watercolor and Pen + Inktober Day 2

I am extraordinarily happy with the way today's canvas panel turned out.

When I began the piece, all I had was a doodle of a face I had done on a scratch piece of paper with a Sharpie marker and the desire to work with watercolors. After quite a bit of working with those mediums, this piece came to fruition. It is piece (10/100) for this challenge (I'm at the 1/10 mark!!). 

I love almost everything about it - the coloring in the face itself, the sharp contrast of the doodling and the swirling, almost tattoo-esque designs. In the long run, I'm a big fan. If you're interested in buying this piece, the link is here.

• In the detail shots I took of this piece, you can see all of the work that I put into the eyes on the face. Though I have a hard time picking my favorite part, if I was required to choose, I might just pick the eyes. I love the way they turned out - solid black outlines in contrast with watercolors is a look I really need to experiment with more in the future.
• Another thing that you can see in the photos above, specifically the photo on the right, are the swirl stamps that I've been using quite a bit recently. When I was recently sorting through some of my art supplies, this stamp set caught my attention. A lot of the time it's the perfect finishing touch to a project. In this instance, I turned it into a highlight all it's own. 
• The colors of this piece are another thing that I love - I started out with some faint pinks and oranges, then added the blue and yellow highlights. The brown helps blend everything together into a pleasing color scheme. 

•  This is the final picture of this particular project I am going to share tonight, and it's one of my favorite photographs that I took. You can see the detail that went into the lips (though it's slightly cut off - there was a lot of cross hatching), as well as the letters stamped in the space between this figures eye and eyebrow. It looked a lot like eyeshadow to me, and I loved that particular aspect of the piece.
• In the above photo, you can also see a lot of the texture I was able to get into the face. This was partially due to the fact that the doodle I was working on top of was just your everyday printer paper, and partially because some of the Mod Podge I used to glue the piece down was also applied on top. At any rate, I love the way it looks.

In addition to the canvas panel, I also wanted to share this bird I drew using only ink. This was for Day 2 of Inktober (I probably won't be posting everything I do on the blog, but you can find the rest of it on my instagram). and I adore the way it turned out. Even just conceptually, it makes me happy. Overall, today has been a good day for art.

I thank you all for visiting, and I hope you enjoyed your stay! I'll see you next time, when I have more to share!

The Night Sky + A Watercolor Portrait (4/100)

I am extremely happy with the way today's canvas panel turned out. The colors turned out exactly the way I wanted them to, and circles have always been a bit of a signature motif for me. Because of that, plus the fact that the vision I had in my head actually came to life, I don't know if I could be happier. 

If you would like to purchase this piece, it can be found here.

• Now we're moving on to a few of the detail shots. In the photo on the left, you can see one of my favorite bits of this little painting - the focal point. I was at the point where the piece was almost completely finished, but it just felt like it was lacking to me. I've really been enjoying playing with this color of paint and I thought I would try it out. I could always paint over it if it didn't work. I like to think that it did.
• I used several different methods throughout this piece to attempt to tie the circles into the background, in addition to letting them stand out on their own. This included, but wasn't limited to, splattering white paint, stamping, watercolors and NuPastels. 
• There was a good bit of collage in the background, a lot of which disappears completely, but I know it's there. If you look closely, you can see a few places where words show through and some black dots that were from a piece of patterned tissue paper.

• I absolutely adore the texture in the first photo. The canvas texture shows through in some places and is completely covered in others. It's one of the things that I've really enjoyed about working on these canvases. 
• Another part of this piece in particular that I adore are the bits of dots that were stamped over the piece. I feel like it helped to tie the piece together and gave a different size of circle for interest. In the long run, I feel like this piece does exactly what I wanted it to in the first place - shows the concept of a night sky.

I also mentioned the other day that I was still extremely interested in doing faces, and just because I had started a new project, I wasn't going to let creating new characters fall by the wayside. The other night, I was feeling in a watercolor kind of mood, and this girl was born! If you follow me on Instagram (@worldofimmensum), you may have seen progress shots of this portrait in my story.

Honestly, I adore the way she turned out. She feels like she's just screaming for a story, and I think she definitely would have a sword. I've been having a ton of ideas lately based on the art pieces I've created, and that's something that I absolutely adore. It's a big part of my reason for doing art in the first place - this blog is my development place for World of Immensum. I've really been enjoying this whole journey so much, and hope all of you agree with me as well.

Again, thank you all for visiting, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Mixing Digital and Physical + A Sketchbook Page

Today the art I focused on doing was a lot more oriented towards drawing and not so much painting, but I suppose the first piece could technically be considered mixed media.

This is definitely one of my favorite things I've finished in a good long while, and I'm happy that I even managed to come up with the concept in the first place. It's definitely something I'm going to have to explore in the future. I scanned the page from my art journal I painted yesterday into my computer to start things off.

A big thing I wanted to do was make this painting feel more finished, so I opened the scan in Photoshop and used my drawing tablet to add solid black outlines. I love the way this turned out, and the lines from the composition paper showing through add a sort of subtle touch that I love.

The second thing I have to share with you all today was a age that I finished in my sketchbook (you can see the marker lines peeking through on the opposite page from this sketch) that I absolutely adore.

When I started this page, the only real idea I had in mind was the girl in the lower left hand of the page. I didn't even realize that I was going to give her a body (which is why the one side of her body is sort of falling off of the page), but I'm glad that I did in the long run. She's a character that I'd love to give a final version eventually. 

After I had given her a little bit of work, I started to develop other concepts and felt the need to put them down as well. After it was all said and done, an hour and a half had passed and this was the result. Sometimes a little bit of pointless sketching is great stress relief, and this was one of those instances.

In the long run, today was more of a time to recover from working four days with long hours in a row. I watched a couple of movies and got nice and inspired in that regard, and the ideas are slowly but surely starting to merge and work themselves out. 

Thank you all for joining me, and I hope you're all as excited to see what the next couple of days (that I have off) will hold!

An Ocean Inspired Watercolor Face

Today's mixed media (but primarily watercolor) face is right up there with some of my favorite pieces I've done for the entire 29 Faces challenge. This is actually my 22nd face that I have completed, despite the fact that it's only the 17th of September (I'm a bit of an overachiever, if you haven't noticed), but I wanted to say that I probably will be continuing to create faces for the rest of the month, even after I hit 29. I've been having an extraordinary amount of fun with it, especially when I manage something that I love as much as this piece.

In the long run, I sort of wish that I had done this piece on a more legitimate surface, rather than a page in a composition notebook, and I don't think I'm going to give this girl any more of a background than she already has. However, I do like the lines peeking through in this piece, so in the end I suppose it all works out.

• This piece was done in a composition book art journal, as previously stated, but I did decide to prep the surface with a thin later of white acrylic paint that I scraped onto it with a palette knife. The pages were slightly shiny and I wanted /something/ for the watercolor to adhere to, rather than sitting on the surface or sinking into the paper. 
• As you can probably tell by the photographs, I incorporated a good bit of graphite into this piece. The entire idea for creating this face was to just play with watercolors. I didn't want to be too structured with it, but I didn't want to be too abstract either. I just wanted to have fun and try to curb some of the fear I have of watercolors. For the most part, I feel like I achieved that. 
• The colors of this piece are honestly one of my favorite parts. The color of her hair originally sprung from trying to incorporate some blue into the actual tones of her skin, but it just sat on top of the face and seemed like it could be shaped into a hairline. I went with it. 

•  Something you can also see in these photos was something I used on another of my favorite faces I've done, which is a gold marker by Studio G that I got at Michaels for something like $1.50. It writes smoothly on top of paint, and it adds a shine and highlight to the page that I utterly adore. Sometimes it just seems to be the perfect finishing touch.
• Almost contrasting yesterday's face (though I like today's a lot better), the blue of her hair made me feel as though she could represent water. That was why I decided to go with such a freeflowing neckline for her shirt, almost letting it fade into waves. 

In the long run, it's days like these that make me excited to do challenges like this one - if I paint enough faces, a few are going to stand out as my favorites!

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope you like this girl as much as I do.

A Fantasy Inspired Art Journal Spread (9.12.2016)

 I had the day off of work today, and because of that, I had the time to complete a couple of faces for 29 Faces! I haven't done more than one face since the second day of the challenge, where I did two sketches in a style similar to the one shown above. I later expanded on one of those sketches later.

However, today only one of my faces is a sketch. This was done while sitting and listening to music - I hadn't been doing much of anything except for browsing the internet. The second I started thinking about it, I got the immediate urge to sketch. I had recently uncovered a set of Prismacolor Premier sketching pencils, so I decided to use them instead of my typical Derwent. I'm pretty happy with the results (I used an HB and a 4B).

This little girl feels pretty determined, which was the intention. I also used the opportunity to experiment with the folds of her clothing a little bit.

My second face was actually created for several challenges. It was done in a composition book, and it's mixed media, as pretty much all of my faces tend to be, unless I force myself to stay in one medium. 

The first challenge that inspired this piece was Mixed Media World's "magical/fantasy" challenge. Likely because I had been creating a lot of faces recently, this was the first thing that came to mind. I combined it with the Mix-It-Monthly challenge "inspired by trees". The third and final challenge this was created for was the More Mixed Media Challenge, "anything goes + optional brown".

The result is something that I'm incredibly proud of.

The majority of the time spent on this piece (I think it took several hours, but I wasn't exactly keeping track) was spent on the face itself. I started out with a background on this particular spread (though with my cardboard series, I haven't been doing anything of the kind), and stayed in colors that sort of screamed fantasy to me (deep browns, reds and greens in particular). I'm glad that I spent so so much time on the face itself, since I'm incredibly happy with the way the page as a whole turned out.

• On the left, you can see some better details of the face. I especially love the way the antlers/tree branches blend into the hair. I also adore the colors. Dark reds mixed with brown is a color palette I'm going to have to explore more often. 
• I spent a lot of time on this figure's shirt, trying to get it to feel right. Sometimes I've been known to just put a t-shirt on a character and call it a day, but I really needed to get this one right. Anything too modern would just throw off the entire feel of the spread. Also, I've been trying to get better at clothing, so this was a good chance to do just that.
• In the right hand photo, you can see the quote that I ended up putting on the page. This was a stamp that I hadn't used at all - that's something else I've been attempting to do, pulling things out of my stash that I've never used and actually doing something with them. Plus, I just love this quote.
• Also in the second photo, you can see one of my favorite tiny little details, done with another stamp I haven't gotten any use out of. I put little leaf clusters on the tree branches, just for an extra little detail. I adore the result.

I don't know why I've been straying towards warmer colors lately (maybe it's just because autumn is coming and I have it subconsciously on the mind!) but I love the results I've been getting out of it.

Thank you all for taking the time to visit, and I hope you enjoyed seeing my work!

Step-By-Step Digital Face (9.10.2016)

I haven't gotten around to doing any mixed media yet today (not that I won't later tonight), so I decided that I'd take a bit of a different approach to today's face for my 29 Faces. Today I made the decision that I wanted to do a bit of digital work in Photoshop, since I haven't used it in a little over a week, and I felt the urge starting to grow. 

I've also mentioned a couple of times that I was interested in doing some digital art for this challenge, and I finally found the time to do as I've been threatening! This piece in particular was done in Photoshop and took 2 hours and 20 minutes.

As you can probably guess if you've been following my 29 Faces journey, this face in particular was inspired by one of the first faces I drew for this challenge. I've been wanting to draw her digitally ever since that sketch appeared in my sketchbook, so I'm happy I was finally able to get around to it. She's always felt very superhero-esque to me, so I went for somewhat of a comic book style with this piece.

Now here's the kicker. Ever since I've started this challenge, I've never done a step-by-step or behind the scenes of any kind. However, I figured now was about the time to do so. I love the progression of digital art and the way it looks, so I typically take progress shots anyways. I figured I'd actually share them this time around.

• As with most pieces of art, my digital art always starts with a rough sketch. This isn't perfect in any sense of the word, and it's solely intended to get ideas down onto the canvas. I typically work my digital sketches in layers, starting with a soft brush to work in large shapes, then I lower the opacity and start a new layer. 
• On said new layer, I use a smaller soft brush to further define the sketch. This process of lightening the opacity and starting new layers continues until I move to a hard round brush, and the steps continue until I am happy enough with the layout of the sketch to start a serious outline.

• The "serious outline" is what is depicted in the above screenshot. Essentially, I start a new layer, much as before. However, instead of being so rough and sketchy with the lines, I define them more - they are going to be my final lines, so I want them to look nice. 
• I used to take a long time on the final outline layer, but I would get so caught up in making sure it was perfect that my pieces could take up to eight hours to complete. Now, I still can take that long to complete a piece, but those are typically full body pieces complete with backgrounds and sometimes several characters.
• I like Photoshop's "Hard Round" brush for my final sketch because it gives a nice line variation in the thickness, but stays solid in color.

•  The next step forward is to do a flat color. This is exactly what it sounds like, and it's fairly straightforward. At this stage in the process I don't worry at all about shading or a light source, or anything of the kind. Instead, this step is purely about making sure the color scheme I've chosen works well.
• It's basically a coloring page at this point - I use a brush to work underneath of the outline layer, filling in color as I see fit. Here I am just making sure that everything works well together, as an overall whole. 

• In order to avoid becoming repetitive (you can scroll up to the top to see the finished piece again) I've decided to show a photo of the finished piece printed out to show the final steps. I think it looks really nice like this. 
• The final step is to add shading and highlights. I typically will start with choosing a light source, then adding in darker shadows with a hard round brush. Then a blend it in with a large brush that changes opacity as you press lighter on your tablet. This will add subtle shadows and shading.
• In the case of this piece, I was going for more of comic book feel, so in addition to that step I also added some harder shadows (most notably underneath of the neck and the mask, as well as in the hair).
• The final step, and my favorite, is to add highlights. These are reflections from the light source, and it takes a bit of practice to get the placement right (I still have some issues a lot of the time), but they add a ton of dimension that I adore.

Please keep in mind that this is only my process for creating art in Photoshop, and it was due to a lot of continuous practice and evolving of style. However, that being said, if anyone has a drawing tablet laying around that they haven't gotten the nerve to use and you end up being inspired to do so because of this post, I'd love to hear from you!

You can also see this face in my portfolio on my website here.

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope that you enjoyed this post and face as much as I do!

Playing Catch Up (9.8.2016)

Due to a lot of things happening last night, it was impossible for me to post on here, as much as I wanted to. However, I still did manage to complete a face, so I had that going for me. Almost as a bonus for you guys, you get to see two faces today!

First and foremost, we have the face that I completed yesterday. This one is a little rough, and was done in colored pencils and graphite. 

This face in particular had unpromising beginnings, so in the end I'm happy with the way she turned out. Essentially, I began the very rough sketch in the dark in a moving car, so it was a little weird when it came to proportions. However, all things considered, I think she turned out very royal looking. 

Somewhere along the way, while I was coloring her, she began to remind me vaguely of Gwen from the television show Merlin - some of the influences started to work for me after that. I would still like to try this girl in particular again, perhaps digitally. We'll see what happens!

Now, we have today's face, which I am extremely happy with. 

I'm beginning to get to the point with painting faces where I'm getting more comfortable with it - it's almost soothing, actually. Sometimes things don't exactly turn out as I planned, but I'm trying to learn to be okay with that. For example, I know this girl's shoulder should be extended further out. However, for this concept to work, that would be impossible. And that's okay!

I took some influences from Tuesday's painted girl as the inspiration for this piece. Of course, there are many things that weren't even close to the same - for example, I didn't use any oil pastels at all in this painting, though the other face's skin tone was almost exclusively oil pastel.

• The main idea that I took from the other post was the dark black painted outlines around the entirety of the character. That was an extremely appealing aesthetic to me, and I felt the need to try to recreate it. Part of me feels like it's going to become a part of my style, though I'm not going to be attempting to nail anything down in stone. 
• In the left photo, you can see some of the finer details of this girl's eye. I'm particularly happy with this part of the painting, I think that the eyelashes turned out great and the color of the eye is extremely pretty. The finer details of the eye were done with a Sharpie pen (again, sometimes they're just great for the small things), but the majority of this face was done in acrylics and graphite pencil. 
• On the left, you can see some of the interesting textures I was able to achieve, especially in the neck area. I've never painted on cardboard before, and it was certainly a new experience (one that I enjoyed immensely and will have to experiment with in the future!).

 

•  In this first photo, you can see some of the better details of the cheek coloring, which I thought was nice. I was playing with some neon pink and trying to get it to blend - I think it did exactly what I wanted it to, luckily enough.
• In this final photo, there are several things that stand out to me. Quite obviously, the focus is on the hair, which is in a style very similar to my own (I think I might need to try thinking outside the box with my next hairstyle), but with highlights to match this girl's eyes. I like the texture that was achieved under the hairline, caused both in part by scratchy acrylic paint and by graphite pencil. The texture in her eye shadow is another added bonus.

In the long run, I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with these faces and playing around with new techniques and ideas - I hope all of you are enjoying following my journey as much as I am enjoying taking it. I love hearing from all of you in the comments, it honestly makes my day!

I hope you all have an amazing day, and I thank you all for visiting.

Journal Cover Transformation (9.6.2016)

For today's face for the 29 Faces challenge, I only knew one thing for certain.

I knew that I wanted to transform one of the journals above (they were found in the craft isle of Target and have 60 pages each - they were also dirt cheap and I thought they'd make cute art journals), and I knew that I wanted to do another mixed media piece. I had the idea that I wanted to do a collage/doodle kind of thing, but somewhere along the way, I pulled away. I still might go back to that kind of idea, but for right now, I'm glad that I changed my mind. 

 Here is the completed journal cover. As I said the other day about a mixed media face, I literally could not be happier with this face. There are so many different things that I love about it, and just as I think I've covered them all, I think of more. It is becoming quite obvious to me that the more I do this, the better I get - big surprise there.

This piece is absolutely my aesthetic, everything that I could have hoped it would be. I wasn't exactly going for the punk look when I started her out, but it just happened. In the long run, I'm super excited to start working in this little journal.

In these photos, you can see some close ups of some different parts of the face that I adore.

• In the left photo, the thing that is front and center is the earring, and it's a little detail that I absolutely adore. I'm not even sure why, especially considering that it's so simple. You can also see some of the detailing of the ultra defined lines - that's one of the things that remained intact from the original idea. The gold around her eyes was gold marker that I added as one of the finishing details.
• Also on the left, you can see a few black dots peeking out from behind the girl's hair. This is a piece of tissue paper in a pattern I've been hoarding for a good long while, just because I love it so much. I finally decided to break it out for this cover, and I'm glad that I did. 
• On the right side, you can see a lot more of this girl's clothing details, which I'm also extremely happy with. The cut out panels of her collar seem to fit her style, as does her choker. Both were done simply with acrylic paint. Her shirt was cut out of a piece of paper I had painted on previously and decided would look good for a shirt. I'm also a big fan of the little cluster of stamping and paint above this shoulder. 
• The face itself is made of a combination of collage, acrylic paint, Portfolio oil pastels, graphite, and markers. Essentially, when it comes to mixed media, I just throw in whatever I think might help the end result.

Overall, I'm extremely happy and excited with the progress I've been making on this challenge. As time goes on, even though it's only the 6th and my 7th face, I feel like I'm making art that I like more. And in the end, that's what it's all about. 

Thank you for visiting, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Mixed Media Canvas Portrait (9.4.2016)

I honestly don't think I could be happier with the way today's 29 Faces piece came out.

I worked on this for a few solid hours before I was finally happy, but it was the complete opposite of yesterday's feeling rushed. It was nice to just work while listening to music, not worrying about much else. I did this piece on a canvas, so that's still a new sort of learning experience, but I'm much happier with this piece than the other canvases that I did.

• Right off the bat, the first thing that draws attention is the hair. This was a shimmer paint that I got from Target last night, and I'm extraordinarily happy with the results of using it for her hair. I had tried to give her a braid, but the more I worked at it, the more I realized she was probably better suited for long, wavy hair.
• The inspiration for this piece, the thing that made me want to make it in the first place, was the idea of incorporating the butterflies into this girl's hair. If you've been following my 29 Faces journey, you'll have seen that the other day I drew a girl with a fairly elaborate mask. She's probably my second favorite face that I've done for this challenge thus far, and her mask was somewhat inspired by the elaborate details often associated with butterflies. From there, this idea was formed.
• On the right, you can see some of the details of this girl's eyes. I actually painted them first, and then painted her hair over top of the face, in order to better get a feel of the flow of the hair and the way it would fall more accurately. 

•  On the left, you can see one of my favorite bits of this entire painting. This little cluster of butterflies, plus the stark contrast of stamping and the gray painted circles pretty much define everything that I love about this piece.
• You can also see some of the texture in this girl's hair in these photos. I think what happened there was that underneath the painting I did a good bit of collage (most of which was covered by the face - you can see some bits of newspaper text at the very top of the piece though) using Mod Podge. Then I dried her hair with a heat gun. It was a sort of happy accident, and I'm super excited that it happened like that.
• The right hand photo is my second favorite part of the painting. It's soft and feminine, and the sharp black stamping adds just the right stylistic contrast for my liking - if you know me, that's basically my fashion style. I like to mix leather jackets and boots with lace and florals. I think that's part of why I love this canvas so much. 

I hope you all enjoyed viewing this painting as much as I enjoyed creating it and love the finished result. It's been great to hear from all of you in the comments, it really makes my day! Until next time, I hope you all have a good time with your art!

Two Faces + A Canvas Pair (9.2.2016)

At least during September, I want to attempt to be more frequent with my posting - daily if possible. I'm not going to make any promises, because I have been extremely busy lately, but I'll do my best.

I figured I would start this post off strong with some sketches I did for 29 Faces. These are faces 3/29, and they came together fairly easily. I use Derwent Graphic Pencils for the majority of my graphite sketches, and this was no exception. In this case, I used an HB for the base sketches, then added details and shading with a 3B.

• The girl on the left is somewhat of a variation of yesterday's face, but a version that I envision to have orange hair. Honestly, I just loved the hairstyle so much that I felt like I needed to play around with it some more.
• On the right was an idea I started conceptualizing yesterday as well. Underneath yesterday's portrait, there was a failed attempt at an oil pastel face. The texture of the background didn't blend well with the oil pastels (I wasn't thinking), and it ended in disaster. However, the girl I had been playing with ended up with some rather free-flowing lines around her eyes that reminded me of a mask. That was what I was trying to recreate here. Part of me thinks that she could be a superhero.

Now we arrive at the "I don't know what I think" portion of the post. I've been wanting to create a set of canvases for a good long while now, but I sort of think that I rushed these a bit. I'm not a huge fan, and I tried to push myself to use warm colors when I'm more of a cool color kind of person.

These were done for part of the 30 in 30 challenge, which is another one of the main reasons I'm going to be trying to blog more often.

 Part of me just thinks that they're underdeveloped. I started adding details like words and giant ink circles when the background wasn't yet ready for it. However, I took a bit of a different direction than I'm used to and I'm more conflicted about it than anything. I don't hate them, I don't love them, I'm somewhere in the middle.

Who knows, maybe somewhere along the way I'll decide to add more onto them, and I'll fix them up to a point where I love them. If I do, you'll all be the first to know!

Thank you for joining me today, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Neon Pink + An Oil Pastel Face (9.1.2016)

It's been a little over a week since I last posted, but it's for good reason.

I haven't really been making a whole lot of art (except the past couple of days I broke because I was already starting to miss it) because I've been working on organizing my art space. Ever since we moved into this house, I don't think that it's ever been properly organized. And by that, I mean a place for everything and everything in its place. It's been clean, but never full out organized.

I'm still not quite done with it, but I've made significant progress, and it's incredibly inspiring. Today, I hope I can inspire you.

As you can see both from the photos above and the photo that started the post off, I've really been enjoying working with bright colors recently. I still like my dramatic bits of black, but I've been trying to experiment a bit.

• Circles have always been aesthetically pleasing to me, and in the photo on the left, you can see four instances of where I used them. I cut some circles out of a piece of phone book paper and glued them down, made some dots with the end of my paintbrush, stamped a dot/circle stamp, and did some paint splatters.
• As far as the paint splatters are concerned, I made them with watered down white acrylic paint, let them dry partially, then picked up what was left with a paper towel. That's why they come across more like outlines of circles (I didn't outline them painstakingly, I promise). 
• Recently I acquired a white gel pen, and I had some fun doodling on this page and playing around with it. The white dots within the yellow ochre circle, and the lines in the crosses were all a result of that.  

Recently I've been inspired by Rae Missigman's 15 Minutes of Mixed Media on youtube. She's a big part of the thoughts behind this page, and the whole reason I decided to add neon pink to my paint collection. I would highly recommend that you check her out. 

Something I'm also extremely excited to announce (if I can even call it an announcement) that I'm doing is participating in 29 Faces for the month of September. I was looking around for something I could do this month, due mostly to the fact that it's officially a new month, and stumbled across this amazing challenge.

I can't guarantee that all the faces I do for this challenge will be mixed media (I already have some digital ideas floating around in my head), but the first one absolutely is. There's some collage (her face was a newspaper page cut into the shape of a face and worked on), oil pastels, acrylic paints and graphite. The watercolor look of her hair was thanks to my Portfolio water soluble oil pastels.

I can't even begin to explain how happy I am with the way she turned out. This page is a bit of a work in progress, as I still have a background to go, but as far as the face is concerned, I think I'm going to leave well enough alone. Just creating this face got the ideas flowing for other types of art, and I'll probably be working in my sketchbook based on this before too long.

I'm super excited to see what the rest of this month will hold, and I hope you'll join me in the adventure!