Art and Sole: Miss.Veronica

Here are the step outs for Miss.Veronica. She is a bubblegum pink girlie, enjoying the summer in her shades and sun visor....apparently not bothered by the flowers in her hair.

I started by roughing out the face and hair, and then placing cut outs of the flowers in the hair. these are just on scrap paper and they are a great way to get an idea of placement.

I started painting the face, using Nougat,Blush,Irish Cream and Snowflake, all Fresco Paints.

I then painted the sunglasses using Pewter, eventually I did cover this, but they started with this colour.

Next I blocked in the sun visor, using Mermaid,Bora Bora and South Pacific. I also outlined the hair using Candy Floss.

I decided that some elements would be stamped directly into the hair, while others would be stamped onto prepainted tissue paper. I love this method as it allows you to create interesting backgrounds within the stamped image that you just couldn't achieve if you tried to paint them in after stamping.

EDY09

This is a mix of Haystack, Yellow Submarine and Autumn Fire.

This is a mix of Irish Cream, Brown shed and Bora Bora

EDY10

The hearts flowers are done with Chalk, Bora Bora, Beach hut and Cherry

The leaves are done on Guacamole, Hey Pesto, Limelight and Green Olives. I love how the slanted text really pops against the green.

and here some more of the spikey flower, done over a stencilled background. It gives such a nice varied colour to the stamped image.

I started to stamp, colour in, add tissue images and fill in with Candy floss. Note how I have painted over part of the flowers/leaves, this will help make them look like they are sitting in the hair and not just floating on the outside.

Next I started to shade the hair, using Orchid, very Berry and Chalk. Don't forget you can always use 'just a part' of stamps.. Here I only use the top of the birdhouse, I masked off and used half the lily leaves hanging down from her hair. .. and only used half the bubble flower on each side.

The stripes on her sun visor are done with the stalks from the grasses on EDY09.

I painted the background and then I cut a rough mask from tracing paper, the easiest way to create a close match.. lay the tracing paper over the painting, trace the outline and cut out..i was then able to stamp the feather all over the background, using the mask to shield the face and hair.

This is how it looks now..

It needed a border, so I painted a mix of colours that matched with colours already used.. onto some tissue paper. then i stamped up the stone wall.. lots of times. As the background is varied, the stones all end up slightly different.

I cut them all out and glued them around the edge.

and now to fill in with more flowers...I also added the fuchsia type buds as earrings.

More flowers and a few chalk highlights in the hair.

Almost there.. but the sunglasses simply weren't reflective enough. So i took some metal card, and very lightly sponged on some South Pacific and chalk. once this was dry I cut out the shape of the glasses and stamped the flock of birds.. hopefully this now looks like the clouds and birds are reflected. The outer edge was done with a black permanent marker.