Gothic Arch - Painting photo copies

This little girl I painted over with inks - but the picture looked too bright and new so I experimented with making it look aged and more like a oil painting so I embossed over it to give it a cracked look. But it still looked too new so....


I rubbed in some brown ink - but she still looked too pale in places.


I started rubbing in some more brown ink.



That's better but I still think she needs a bit more work done on her.



This is the result after 'ageing' the work. It is brighter in real life but by the time I had finished the light had dulled and it had started to rain outside. By brighter - I don't mean lighter - just clearer.

She looks more like a painting now than a photo.

I might well do a bit more when I look at her again.

A word of warning about painting with inks - if you don't have a steady hand the ink can 'leak' onto another place.

In this work I very carefully painted the blue fabric, going over it layer by layer until I got it dark and shaded in some places to give a bit of depth.

BUT

I had inadvertently painted some blue ink onto her hand - well it has spread over it - the paper must have been too wet. One thing you can't do with inks - which you can do with paints - is to ink over a lighter colour to cover up your mistakes.

BUT

I did come up with an ingenious way to rescue the blue stained hand and arm - without turning it into a tattoo.