The Making of Love my Dress New York Painting

 

 I thought it might be interesting to do a little step by step insight into how a painting goes together! Above you have the start and end points, the initial sketch and the final image that has now gone live on LoveMyDress.net and has been printed onto stationery that will be winging it's way to New York with the lovely blogger Annabel. (please excuse my wonky iPhone photos!)

First basic ink outlines, more as a guide so the original lines aren't lost as I begin to add opaque acrylic inks.

First layers of watercolours and acrylic inks laid on, giving myself an initial impression of  the way the colours will work

Some more opaque acrylic inks added, building up some cleaner, bolder lines and blocks of colour.

A bit of attention added to the figure to clean up the lines and give the outfit and face more depth.

Sepia acrylic ink added, as you can see this builds up the majority of the tone at this stage, has given the artwork more depth and detail. Most of the details are now in and will stay much the same.

Bolder colours are added using opaque acrylic inks, to give it a more solid and less watercoloury look. I have gone over many of the sepia lines to make them bolder and more defined. This is basically the finished piece, though you can see some of the ink is quite wet still on this photo! You get an impression of how liberal I am when applying this ink from this photo, I really do blob it on with a brush! A few more edits to make in Photoshop before we reach the true final version but it's pretty much there.

The finished article with some of my tools of the trade!
(About 5 mins before I spilled that whole pot of red ink on my white shagpile rug)