She is a strong guiding creative energy that is focused and guiding.

Feeling complete

Today is my Saturday in my art space and it is such a joy.i get this lovely block of focused time.
I finished my painting and the delightful thing is that as I look at her I know the dress is wool crepe and the shawl is a soft velvet. I love the way the intuitive process takes you on an adventure and shapes images that come through you. I could not have consciously planned this piece but by allowing and listening magic happens and she evolves. Of course I could sit down and do a planned piece but that is not half as much fun as the discovery, surprises and risk taking along the way when I listen and trust my inner muse.

My final steps

1. I already knew that I wanted to add lace so I started adding black triangles along the sides of what looked like a colorful shawl. Remember I’m trusting my intuition and a shawl was not something I planned.
2. I left that section to dry and scrapped some gold paint over the textured pattern paper.
3. I then found a stencil and wherever the wallpaper wasn’t, I added the stencil pattern. using a makeup wedge and gold paint over the green background.
   I then went back and spent a couple of hours on the lace detail.
4. After that I got my Golden high flow acrylic sepia high flow acrylic and added this over most of the green areas in the background. I did not do this perfectly as the plan was to let some of the green show through.
5. I added Golden high flow acrylic nickel azo gold to the dress section below the bust. I didn’t like it.
6. When the nickel azo gold had dried I firstly used a sepia glaze along edges and then over the bottom section of the dress. This worked much better.
7. I added the green to the leaves and then added white over one side. As I did this I started adding some overlaps to the vines the leaves were on,
8. Adding more detail to the hair but allowing some of the material pattern to show through.Firstly I added some Golden fluid acrylic green gold to the hair ties and then added highlights in white. I also refined some of the basic leaf shapes in the hair.
9. I came back into the hair and refined the shapes and added some line work with paynes gray. I usually fiddle with the paynes gray until the blue black mix is exactly how I like it
10. The dress looked better but not working yet ( which means it just didn’t feel right) so I reached for a Ateliar fluid acrylic viridian green. I wondered as I did it if it would work as it was a strong contrasting color. I had a rag in hand just in case I needed to wipe it back but it was exactly what was needed. Sometimes you have to be brave and just go with intuition and see what happens. I added a thinner layer to the bust area to differentiate and give her body shape.
11. I realised that the lace line at the bottom edge of the painting needed to curve in to keep the eye direction moving up towards the face so I redid this small section of lace and the composition was much stronger.
12. I then added a Golden fluid acrylic vermillion red line along the joining edge of the lace. When it dried I ran a row of dots along the red and red dashes over the bottom section of the dress to add interest and some variety to the dark areas.
13. The next step was to add some dabs of vermillion red into the hair to give it more interest. I wanted the abstract designs of the flowers to show through but not to be totally dominant.
14. I added highlights to the shoulders and realised I needed to add the orange that it was in the background material layer. I added this on both shoulders and rubbed it back with a rag so it would not be too overpowering.
15. With orange paint still on my brush, I added directional lines into the hair with the orange paint.
    I came back in with white lines in the hair to further define the hair.
16. Finally I worked on the face by refining the lip color and adding highlights.
    I then worked on the eyes by refining the shape with paynes grey and a black sharpie.
17. I added highlights to the eyes and refreshed the highlights on the cheeks, nose and chin.
18. Finally I added the pale white highlight line to the top of the shoulder and part way down the shawl.

I stepped back and she felt complete…at least for now. It is always about the way it feels as I trust my intuition and have fun playing with possibilities.

Close up detail: The Artists’s Muse