Painting Progress, Lessons Learned & Tattoo Sleeves

Me and Sara Jr.  Click this to enlarge. You know you wanna.

I finished the background on my portrait of Sara last night and for the first time ever in my history of background painting, I love it! I usually end up picking something too stark or bright, which ends up taking away from the subject. Like on my portrait of Jordan, I wanted a warm brown fading to black, but it ended up a burnt orange that was WAY too bright. So this time I did some research on how to pick the perfect background. I found that you should choose a color or tone that you've used in the subject, but a toned down, muted version of it. So I chose a few teal hues that were in her eyes and skintone, then muted them down by adding yellow, red and black. Here's what I ended up with! I wanted the painting to have an overall all "cool" feel - like she's an ice princess. Tonight I'll either finish up her halo or get started on her sleeve of tattoos.

The sleeve of tats is going to be hard because of the angle of her body. She is looking up at the viewer and her her back shoulder is on a higher plane than her front. I'm not sure if that really translated in this painting, but I'm hoping the tattoos will clear that up. I also have to finalize my tattoo design that I'm going to put on her arm. I'm wavering between two ideas: 1. An art nouveau, Mucca style tattoo of a woman, much like his painting series of the seasons. 2. An intricate tattoo incorporating classic nautical iconography like a ship and crashing waves and maybe even an octopus reaching up to gobble said ship up. Floating banners and a compass would also be incorporated somewhere. Suggestions or votes on which idea are welcome!

Back to work. Hoodzpah just got a job designing some soft goods for the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and we couldn't be more thrilled. We want to make Robert DeNiro proud so we're wasting no time in getting started!

- Amy

Listening to: JD McPherson's "North Side Gal"