💋 Ruby

039 Ruby
(Based on Similar works by Malika Favre)

Following on from Ladies Day which I painted recently I wanted to do another in the same sort of style.  I found a picture online that appeared on the front cover of a magazine called Woman.  I am not sure who the original artist is although it is very similar to Page Turner by Malika Favre, the inspiration for my last piece, Ladies Day. 

For this piece I did it by splitting the flipped picture into two seperate templates.  I did this because I wanted to be 100% sure of the hair lines position.  I probably could have free drawn it in but I have started it this way now so may as well follow it on.

The edges have now been drawn around and I am now about to start the free drawing of the facial features.

All is fully drawn in now and we are now ready for the fun bit - Colouring it in!

A close-up of the features

The background was painted using Daler Rowney's Graduate Acrylic Cadmium Red Deep Hue (504).

Then I put in all the Black areas using Winsor & Newton Mars Black.

I then went back to the same Red as the background and coloured in her hair and lips.  I have now decided to give her an eye which I am fairly confident of drawing in.

For the Brighter areas of skin I used Soft Skin.  The eye has been drawn in in this photo but does look odd.  Hopefully it will look right.

For the middle shaded areas I used the 'Shadows' shade that I use in skin normally.

And real dark shadows were painted the same Mars Black as all others.  As you can see from the photo above, I have drawn in both eyes and it does look a litte weird because the original image that inspired me doesn't have eyes for it's an art style.  Mine will be different.  Oh and don't forget to paint in the Nostrils!

So I started off by painting in the bright whites with Titanium White making sure there were a good few layers of it to completely cover my pencil sketch marks.

Then a Fine brush and the Mars Black were back to start defining the eyes with some eyeliner and mascara.

And a couple of Titanium White dots to finish off.