Witchy Woman

My goodness, I've been terribly slow, getting the artwork done. Part of that is not entirely my fault. You see, my husband and I finally redid our studio downstairs.

Not only did it take a lot of time, but my workspace was in an uproar, and I was totally unable to get to my supplies.

But it was well worth it, because now we have a nice pretty yellow and hot pink studio vs. brown. Yeah. It really was brown, and not very inspiring for two creative souls like us.

Now that it's all finished, I had a little time this past week to play around.

I'm working on several paintings/collages right now, but Witchy Woman is the first one done.

I started and finished this last night. A record for me considering I started a haunted house about 6 months ago, and have yet to finish it.

Anyhoo, about the picture. First the background. You can't really tell in this photo, but the background looks like cobwebs.

This was one of those happy accidents, that sometimes happen when you play around with new techniques.

I started off by painting orange over everything. When that was dry, I took a sponge and dabbed/smeared black and white paint around. At first I was just going for a little bit of a texture look and totally thought I would be adding much more, either colors or collage elements, but when I stopped, and stood back, I saw that it had this really neat cobweb effect. Needless to say, I was really pleased.

From the beginning, I knew I would be making a painting of a witch. However, the original idea I had was a more whimsical character. I was intending to make her friendly and fun looking, but obviously that didn't happen. :)

I really had a lot of fun creating her. Painting for the most part is so much fun for me. I love to listen to my music and paint fast not really thinking too much about detail.

For most of the picture I could do that. The hair and face were big enough, but when it came time for the neck and hat. Ugh! I had to do shading in small spaces, and that is just not fun for me. I'm way to impatient. The use of small brushes irritates me. My husband on the other hand is the king of detail and can't understand my aversion to it. He will spend forever on one picture. Obviously that makes him the better artist, but that's okay, I like my method.

However, if it wasn't for him hounding me, the hat and neck wouldn't have any shading at all. I admit it looks waaaaaaaay better with the extra effort, but boy is it boring!

Now if only I could just get that Witchy Woman song out of my head...