The WIPs are below (click for large images) so you can see how I went from Ayayla's lovely background to the fully realized Frida painting in the final.
I had a couple of reference photos I used for Frida's face and I painted directly onto the canvas with my Golden acrylic paints. I wanted to go for a colorful style so there is plenty of bright blue, pink, red and orange in her face. I thought that would match the super background.
Once Frida's face was painted, I used some pretty scrapbooking papers to cut out flower shapes for her hair. And overtop of those flowers, I just used a gel pen to draw in petals and shapes. I did the same thing directly on the canvas background - gel pens and permanent marker to create more flower definition for background decoration.
I finished off the canvas with a light spray of varnish to keep everything clean and in place. All done!
If anyone else is interested, I'm always up for another canvas board collaboration! Just get in touch with me here and let's get started :)
Here's the canvas I sent to Ayala (see previous post too) and the lovely painting of a pretty Calavera girl she sent back to me.
