Pop Punk Princess

I'll just start out by saying that I don't dip my brushes in pigment too often, but once every year or so, I get bitten by the bug. This year, the bug must have been really big, because I'm still itching to do more color work. It's not that I dislike painting, or feel that I'm particularly bad at it. I may have a lack of discipline that comes from completing about a painting a year, but, all in all, I'm happy with the paintings that I've done in the past few years. No, the biggest reason why I don't do so much painting is because of the very involved level of prep work that goes into it. When I draw, I sit down with a pencil and whatever reference, rough it out, and then grab my pen and go to town. I can do it anywhere, anytime, on any surface. When I paint, I have to find a workspace, sort out my paints, clean my pans and brushes, figure out a color pallette to use, set up my board and easel, do a tight-ish rough of the piece, tape it down without it buckling, and then I'm ready to paint. Just getting to the pigment is nearly exhausting, and the challenging part's yet to come!

So, this piece. I like how it looks in my hands. I'm not so sure how it looks on the screen. There are things that the scanner catches and amplifies that just don't show in the original, and I'm not so practiced at retouching color work that I'd feel confident about trying my hand at it. Also, I don't trust JPEG compression when it comes to colors, because the same aliasing that softens linework and greys tones out tends to do wacky things to large, uneven fields of color. I suppose it's the nature of the digital beast if I want to show it off online, though.

At any rate, I do hope this pleases people. It does please me.

Techs:

Dimensions: 11"x14", slightly masked at the edges, and digitally cropped and scaled.
Materials: Gouache on 110lb. watercolor paper.
Time: About 10 hours, done in a day.

References Material:
The generous cutie of a-nerds-stock, found here: [link] Specifically, this photo here: [link] I like this girl. I think I might paint or draw her again, soon.