The Fruits of My Labor

Yesterday I woke energized which made it easy to get down to the studio.  I spent 4 hours, 3 of which I was dedicated to practicing drawing using the book Mixed Media Portraits by Pam Carricker.  My goal was to work on proportions and shading.  Today I spent 2 more hours.  Here are the process images I snapped.

I reworked the nose/mouth alignment at least five times.  I started out trying to give her a double chin, but couldn't render it.  (note: examine more closely my own chin for help)  The last image I warmed up in Picasa. The ear on the left needs to be darker and the highlights in the eyes do not satisfy me but I am mostly content with the shading.  

I posted this study on my blog before, I think.  It is loosely inspired by the novel Sula by Toni Morrison and the title is We Were Girls Together.  It was painted, quilted and mounted on a wood frame.  The finished size was around 18"x12".  I did another outline for what will be a larger quilt which is what you see above the quilt.  Not sure if I will drawn the image again directly on cloth or clean this outline up and use a projector to get the image on cloth.  I will paint it but the background will be partially pieced like a traditional quilt.

This morning while I was gulping, (sip, me, really??) my coffee and eating an orange I recalled me telling my granddaughter when she was a year younger, (she is 5 now) that an apple tree was going to grow in her stomach because she had swallowed a seed.  She immediately teared up and was building up to hysterics and I had to convince her that I was kiddling....she was uncertain and looked at me like "why would my Nana play about a thing like that".  When I was young and was told the same about swallowing orange seeds I thought it would be fun to have a tree growing in my stomach and kept eating them.  That is the kind of family I come from where Grandparents and Uncles convince a child that it is really possible to grow trees in your stomach by eating the seeds of fruit.