Leilani's Competition

It's always fun to try something new. This competition that Leilani Joy put together fell right into that category: use one of Leilani's templates to create a character (full details on her website).  

Definitely not my typical landscape drawings! I thought it would be a good opportunity to get my 15 year old daughter involved in some art, too. I want her to have a chance to explore her creativity now and not wait as long as I did!

 She decided to use colored pencil for her character.

I stuck with watercolor (we all have our comfort zones!) The first one looks like it needed some defining lines so on the second one, I started by outlining the figure with Expo pen just to try it out.  This was an idea I had gotten from David Peterson. He likes using it because the ink doesn't bleed with the water... I like the effect, but I thinkI needed a finer point. 

There was definitely a difference from my regular painting plein air or from a photo. This required me to create it from my imagination, not something I've excersiced recently. I'll have to practice that one...

I also need to learn how to apply make-up to make the eyes pop! Ha,ha! Just kidding

I ended up printing the templates onto plain copy paper and not onto watercolor paper. This was a challenge because the paper's absorbancy was SO poor.  The color ran, the paper warped and wrinkled...I'm sticking with my watercolor paper!

Check out Leilani's website http://www.leilanijoy.com/