Lesza Part 350677

Hey y’all!!

I’ve been a little busy, but I’ve been painting! I just haven’t had time to update here. 🙂

Quick whine, then onto the mini…

We went to Nacogdoches (about 4 hours away) to take my boards because everywhere closer was closed due to the coronavirus. So, we drove there, got a hotel, and settled in for the day. I can get lost anywhere, so we went ahead and scouted out the testing site the day before to see where it was and the best way to get there from our hotel. When we got there, they had big signs taped up all over the place, so I called the test administrator. They said, “It doesn’t look like you’ve been canceled, let me check and call you back.” Turns out, I hadn’t been canceled, but the site wasn’t open. So I had to reschedule. To say I was devastated is an understatement. I’m just waiting to pass this test to be done and be able to go on with life, professionally. I also want a few weeks off with the Tiny Overlord where I’m not studying and stressing the whole time. But, alas. It has not been meant to be so far. So, I took the whole week off of studying last week, and just painted and played and baked. I’m resuming studying this week, and testing next week.

Alright, onto painting! I worked on her hair, the transition between her arm and the wood piece, and started flirting with the green all over her. I decided that the pieces all over her belly could be vines too, and I went with a ‘wood’ look on her amulet/holy symbol. I also decided that I wanted the knots to be beads instead. Why not?!

There’s no way to attach her hand yet, so I’ve got that set up on a different holder to get it all lined out. I haven’t completely decided on a scheme for the dragonfly yet, but I’m leaning blue. I am not sure how I’m supposed to make the wings look clear, maybe I’ll go iridescent instead? We shall see.

Here’s some better views on the green and red berries I’ve started all over her. I like the idea of having a ton of different colors and striations on the leaves. At one point, I had taken a ton of pictures at Moody Gardens for leaf references. I’ll have to go look at those again. Leaves don’t care about smooth blends. 🙂

I decided that she needed some freehand. Just some superfluous frippery. 🙂 I figured, if I’m trying to level up, I better take a big bite. It’s supposed to look like birch trees. I still have some work to do on the cloak as a whole, but let me know what you think! I’ve been trying to mock things up and follow the advice in the Imaginative Realism book, so here’s my rough sketch too. You can still see my ‘eyeline’ I was going for in the first picture.

I also tried to go ahead and push her tattoos back into her face. They looked like facepaint before, so I glazed some more of her skin tone over them to help them fade back a little bit. They’re a little more prominent in person, so I’ll have to work on the photography angle for that.

I was super upset to hear about reapercon being canceled. It was one of those things that I expected, but I was still disappointed. Supposedly, there will be some sort of online contest. So, there’s that. But that means that I need to actually get my lightbox set up and take some really good pictures. Keep an eye out for those. 🙂

Alright, here she is as of now. Hope y’all are enjoying these updates. I’m really enjoying taking a lot of time on her, and trying new things. I suggest you just grind stuff out if you wanna get better at it. Push it to where you think it’s too far, and then go one more step. Give that spot a day, DON’T TOUCH IT! 🙂 Then see how you feel the next day.