How I Painted This - Waving Queen
Painted this as gift for our local Homecoming Queen and her family. Here is how I painted "Waving Queen".
As a surprise gift, I decided to try and paint a portrait of the local Homecoming Queen from a photo I took at the Homecoming Parade.
As I've mentioned before, I really like doing these as a "surprise gift". I find it strikes a balance between "trying to make a great painting" and "if it doesn't work out, I don't have to give a gift".
So all of the encouragement of giving a wonderful gift, without any guilt of failure!
First thing I did was to run the photo through the really helpful (and completely free!) Value Study Buddy to get some reduced color images for a value study. This one has eight values of gray.
So I then proceeded to paint a value study using Daniel Smith Payne's Gray in my watercolor journal. The watercolor journal is pulp, not cotton, so the paint tends to lift a bit with multiple layers.
After what I considered a successful 5x7in practice version, I decided to paint the larger 11x14in version as the gift. I used the same Payne's Gray. Since her dress and gloves were white, I think the Payne's Gray made for a nice monochromatic painting.
Here is the final piece.
This video is about 10x speed up of the process.
Here is a photo of both the 5x7in and 11x14in versions hanging on the wall. When the practice version looks good enough, I like to give it as a little bonus gift. They may want to give it to someone else.
I gave them the gift the day after I completed it. They were very surprised and really seemed to like it. Mission accomplished!
So that is how I painted "Waving Queen".
Feel free to give the free Watercolor Tools a try.
Happy painting!
Tags: howipaintedthis, queen, portrait, watercolor
