I have finished my second project for Avant Garde Painted Ladies (run by the lovely Mika at Motley Soul Mixed Media)

This lady had such a journey. The layers of colour around the eyes were very interesting - and a big learning curve! Learning how to cover things up with gesso that is! But I am so happy with how she has turned out.

My avant garde lady is nearly finished :)

So, I have over-committed myself, as per usual. It is my Dad's birthday on Sunday, and my son and I are making him a pirate ship cake. Then next Saturday is my daughter's third birthday, then three weeks later is my son's fifth birthday. So food and birthday cakes on the brain at the moment. But still finding time to paint and draw, and am working on one thing at a time(hahaha- not really...). So my first project for Motley Soul Avant Garde Painted Ladies is in the works, this is where she is up to so far:

And I've also done a journal page, but for some reason blogger wants it to be sideways :-/

I have been busy working on some sketches, my latest one:

I really need to work on my hair issues... I just can't do it....

I am really looking forward to starting Painted Ladies with Mika at Motley Soul in the next few days :)

Fabulous Faces/Face2Face, three quarter profile

It has taken me such a long time to get to these Paint Your Story backgrounds - I started doing faces on them last week, and am now getting shading and features on them. But I am loving how they are coming together :) This one I really love - she had swirls in the background, I'm not sure what they are, but they are now part of her do!

Another WIP "while changes are underfoot"

 And another WIP - "love is always the answer"

And this girl "and how I look at flowers" - I hated this one to start with! I had to totally repaint her face, and now I am loving her, she still looks fairly pensive though hehe :) Interesting how they look so different on the computer screen...

I have been doing some more work on my Paint Your Story backgrounds, and actually worked up the courage to put a girl on one!
This is where the background started out:

Then I added my girl:

A bit more tweaking:

And a bit more, then voila! This is where I am up to now:

It seems that the further into the painting I get, the more stuck I feel :/ I think I am more attached to it as I have spent more time and effort getting it to this point, so feel funny about doing crazy stuff to it - but I need to take a deep breath and do a bit more crazy as I am not happy with the green and pink around her head, it just looks a bit boring, or else I need to carry the green and pink out further...hmmm....

I signed up for Mindy lacefield's Paint Your Story course a while back, and have just gotten to it, and boy is it fun! I am getting some backgrounds done, this is the initial stage, I will go back to them and change them a bit once they are dry :)