Tuesday, May 1, 2012

What was I up to today? 29 Faces in May

So, as you may or may not know (I posted about it a couple days ago), I have joined the 29 Faces in May challenge in which I challenge myself to create and share 29 faces within the 31 days of May! I am so excited for this challenge, already on the Facebook group I am seeing AWESOME faces being posted!

I asked my oldest child last night when he thought my first face should be and he said "Alice". Ah, Alice. I LOVE Alice! For my picture, I used American Mcgee's Alice as inspiration. I actually started drawing before I looked at any images and realized after I had the face painted and background started that I had done her hair wrong, eh, that's ok. She was just inspiration.

So, she was supposed to be a little bit mad, sadistic and dark with a hint of innocence. Well, I am still working on getting those emotions across in facial expressions and painting. But I am pretty pleased with my outcome, for me.

This is the sketch this AM.

I got about half way through and HATED her! I am telling you, I was so frustrated with how the background was coming out and I still had hair and clothing to paint, I wasn't happy with how her face was painted, and I knew it would be forever before I was done. My inner critic almost had me convinced to toss Alice out and was in the middle of telling me that it would just be easier to draw a marker girl in my Book Of Days and just forget about this piece, when I realized, all the hard work was done! Sure, it might be a while before I was finished depending on how much I "fixed" her, but I should at least give her and myself a chance! So on I trudged...

I am sorry, none of my other "process" pictures came out very well so I am not going to worry about sharing them, we will jump right to the finished piece.

The finished page.
Close up of Alice's face and some graphite shading.
My favorite quote from the movie.






So, there you have it! Face number 1 completed! Join me tomorrow to see how face #2 turns out!