AEDM: Day 14 The completed painting...

 I really got into the painting last night, and was able to  complete it, more or less. ( I may add more words, I have to wait and see). I used gel medium to glue down my copied and enlarged sketch, but did not put any over the top. I wanted the paper to still have some "tooth" because I was using oil pastels to color her in, along with Inktense pencils, and I didn't think they would work as well on a slick surface.

 I have never used oil pastels before, I actually went in to buy water soluble oil pastels, but the store didn't have any. Now you would think I would just wait for the others to arrive in the mail, but I just couldn't resist. I first colored in her hair, facial features and clothing with my Inktense pencils, then went over them with a damp paint brush to blend. If there is an area that you want lighter, don't put any ink there, drag a bit in with your paintbrush, that's a good way to shade. At this point I also glued down the word kindness, as I wasn't sure if the gel medium would stick to the oil pastels. Then I started coloring in the flesh with pastels. At first they went on chunky, like a crayon, and I thought I had ruined the piece. I couldn't figure out how you could get any details out of them at all. Then I started adding white over the top of the flesh color I first used, and that's when the creaminess of the medium made it's self known. I used my finger to start blending the two colors all over the sketch, and added shadow with a gold tone. Everything smoothed out beautifully. I put in a little more white in highlighted areas, and added the blush to her cheeks. I didn't want to give her clown rouge, so I scribbled a bit of pink onto some scrap paper, and then picked some up on the end of my finger, and lightly rubbed it into her cheeks. I used a paper sketching stub to get into tight areas, and to clean some pastel away from the black sketch lines. I like how she turned out. Of course now I was faced with the issue of pastels staying smearable. They don't actually dry, you have to seal them. A little online research says to spray them with a workable fixative....? I don't know what that is, but I sure don't have any. I decided to try just another coat of medium. I tested on a small part of her neck. After it dried, it was fine. It seemed to seal up nicely, so I went ahead and covered her. I then added the flowers to her headband, and another coat of medium.

Here is a bit of detail on the birdhouse. Rubber stamps, ink, stamps and a new roof. Everything is edged and highlighted with water soluble crayons, and there you go...all done. Thanks for taking this little journey with me, I hope that seeing it broken into steps helps a bit. Enjoy...