When I was in high school I used to love working with acrylics. I think it was mostly because my mom used to do wood crafts and she would buy all of those $1 bottles of acrylic paint from Walmart and I would use what was left over in those to make my own art.
Since then, I've expanded quite a bit and experimented in may other mediums. I tried my hand at soft pastels for the first time and taught myself to use watercolors, which used to be the bane of my existence. The only trouble is that it turned out to be harder than I thought to switch between the two, which you might notice in the photos that follow.
I started with a rough drawing and used an approximate grid to help with this one, not so much because the subject was complex but because I generally suck at anything having to do with people and I had a limited amount of time to complete this one.
But as soon as I started laying in the paint I found myself watering everything down - thank you very much watercolors.
I gradually got more used to the acrylics and layered in some more intense colors. Then it came to the challenge of the all the water splashes. I experimented a lot with different brushes, angles, and paint thickness while working the splashes. My goal was to have a layer of splashes built up before I painted the girl sot hat it would look like there were splashes both in front of and behind the subject. I'm not sure how well I accomplished this in the end, but I certainly learned from it.
Layering in the colors was more fun, but at this stage I ran out of paint lol
Having gone to the store and stocked up on white acrylics, I came back and finished up the splashes, added a bit more detail to the dress, reworked the skin tones, redid the hair using wet on wet and dry brush techniques (also fun learning process), and added still more splatter. I may have over done it. :-p
