hahaaaa... sad times... I had a friend who had recently shot himself, and while everyone else with this prompt drew birthday parties and other kinds of happy surprises, I drew this, you can only imagine how concerned my art teacher was. Also, the lack of sleep I had was wearing on me, I spelled surprise wrong so I had to go on paint and correct it. It was the beginning of the school year and my friend had killed himself just at the end of summer break, when I was so busy having fun in the sun, it was the most surprising event I have experienced. So I tried to paint a beautiful scene with bright colors with a depressing scenario so that it wouldn't really match up... aka surprise.
Had fun trying to capture this. Someday I'll figure out how to get the watercolor gradient I want. Meanwhile this was a fun way to practice and I freaking love these Daniel Smith watercolors. I definitely need to get some full tubes of certain colors. (Moonflower, Lunar Violet, Opera Pink, Cerulean Blue, all the Cobalts, i think all the Primateks - I haven't tried them all yet... *Sigh*)
This is the first and only portrait I've done of my daughter [Rae] when I decided to get back into drawing and start trying portraits 2 yrs ago. I've worked on other portraits since and my skills are improving however this is still one of my favs
