Extended Blind Contour

While there is no evident or purposeful "story" in this piece of art, and it in no way relates to my life, I knew that after I had finished drawing my blind countoured faces, I wanted them to be diverse, and show many different ethnic backgrounds, as well as uncommon features: some women have freckles, another has red hair, one has dark skin, while the other two are paler, etc...

To make this piece, my class and I were required to make blind contours of our hand, and two faces (I did one more because there was too much blank space in one area of the paper). Once these blind contours were complete I had my artists linsence to go forth and finish the piece however I chose, so long as the main focus was the blind contours (which were done with a thin sharpie pen). In order to make the rest of the piece, I used the sharpie pen - to add more crisp lines, watercolors, and colored pencils - for small areas like the lips and eyes.

I knew that I wanted the backround of this piece to have someknd of pattern, which is very hard to do with thin watercolors. To overcome this challenge, I decided to frist lay down come watercolor masking fluid in whatever pattern–I chose swirls–and then wait for that to dry before adding watercolor over it. I also used the masking fluid in whatever areas of the face (the highlights) that I did not want color. After the watercolor was dry, I eraesed the masking fluid to reveal the pattern, which I was very satisfied with, I had no idea that the masking fluid would make such crisp lines, so I was pleasantly surprised. When created this project, I realized that the more I kept working and adding more color, the better it got. For example, adding pops of color to the eyes and lips gave the piece more emphasis and contrast. If I were to keep working on this piece, I would probably add more shading and stronger lines.