The next few drawings were focused on learning how to draw a child's face.  It's not as easy as you would think.  A fellow artist shared a drawing she did and wrote, "I drew a picture of my 4 year old niece and I aged her to an 81 year old!"  It definitely takes practice!

Practice Practice

I used the tan paper, because it took some of the work off of the drawing.  With tan paper, you work on the darker shading and the highlights.

I went through my son's baby pictures and realized I don't have a lot of profile pictures of him as a baby.  I did find one though and modeled this drawing after it.  Clearly my son doesn't have pointy ears and blue hair, but it was a great way to practice!  When I draw fairies and elves, there's a lot of freedom and low stress.

This felt more like scribble art.  No pencils, all pens and highlighters.  A while ago, I realized there's an ugly phase to each art work process.  At some point, the artist won't like it.  If you can keep going though, it gets better.  I guess in that way, art is a lot like life.

Did I mention how drawing and painting fairies gives a sense of freedom?  Squished fairies is crazy fun!  My son inspired me to try style.  He loves to do silly selfies.  I explained that there are people who like to take flowers and squish them between pages.  Some artist thought to do the same, but imagined capturing fairies between the pages.  I asked my son if I could use one of his silly selfies to turn him into a squished fairy.  He thought it was hilarious!

More Practice, these drawings are on tan paper using erasable colored pencils and Chinese markers

It wasn't just learning how to do a child's face, but also how to do a profile, both of which I don't draw a lot of.  As I practiced, I realized the faces were getting older.  I thought if I flipped it, I could make the faces younger again.  Doing that helped me get out of my own way.

From a child's face, I thought I'd try more of a baby's face.  The chubby checks is a big part of th

I drew the rose first, then the hexagon shapes around it.    It was enjoyable to paint something representing nature coupled with patterns.

I learned there are two different types of gouache.  There's the regular gouache - which is thicker than watercolor, at least it feels that way to me, but it works like watercolor.  After it dries, it can reactivate with water.  Then there's acrylic gouache.  It activates with water, but won't reactivate when dry.  I confused the painting by using both.