In part one of this step by step, I’d painted my background, skin tones and the green dress.

Taking inspiration from the material I was going to use for the dress I decided to make her blonde and blue-eyed. I wanted the cool blue to offset the fiery background and to have another cool tone to blend with the pink bird elements. Straight acrylic, block colours.

At this point I also decided that I needed to give the background a sort of ‘late summer in the wheatfield’ feel, with blossoms flying around and long grasses around her feet. I used waterproof ink in sepia and bright green with my foam stamps.

More background

I decided I needed to collage on the material to get a better idea of where I wanted to go with the rest of it.

I collaged on the material for the dress by tracing over the drawing, then transferring it to the material and cutting it out. Top tip – run some gel medium around the edges of the material straight away to prevent fraying, before you actually collage it. It’s a lot easier than trying to do it when it’s on the board. The dress is collaged on with gel medium and then coated in it as well to seal it. I re-drew her arms over the top rather than messing about with a gully and two parts of a dress. I covered them with gesso and redid the skin tone once it was dry. I forgot to take a picture of that part. I added more green translucent acrylic (plenty of glaze medium) to the bottom of the picture because it was looking too stark.

Material collage dress

Now the hat and face. I had a scrap of some Basic Grey scrapbook paper hanging around that matched the dress, so I collaged that on the same as I did for the dress. I edged it in brown and painted the underside of the hat in brown as well. I used clear gesso over the whole face area and added shading in prismacolor pencils, blending with a very light peach tone. I re-added any white highlights in white acrylic. Final detailing on the eyes, lips and hair was added with black waterproof pen, Sakura gel pens and acrylic paint.

Finishing the face

Finally I decided on the placement of the birds and cage and collaged them on with gel medium. I added colours to them with pencil and ink to add definition and an aged look. Finally I decided it looked a little top heavy and added some translucent tissue paper in green with a white dandelion clock motif to draw the eye to the bottom. I edged the bottom half in sepia ink and the top in a pink to match the birds. I blended it up the side with my finger while it was wet.

Adding the Bird elements

I may add little details here and there, possibly some writing. I haven’t put her necklace in that I drew in the initial sketch yet. I need it to sit on my easel for a few days until I decide if it’s really finished. I have toyed with adding eyelashes, paper flowers and/or ribbon on her hat, some tissue paper in the background, more birds and various other bits, but I quite like all the ‘white space’ and I don’t want to clutter it just for the sake of filling some of it up.

It needs to brew a while until I decide whether I’m done.