Zoe Kravitz's Amazing Dior Dress At The Emmy's

There were a lot of amazing dresses at the Emmy's last night, but one of my favorites was the Dior rainbow ombre feathered dress worn by Zoe Kravitz.  She looked lovely.  She and her boyfriend, Karl Glusman, looked so stylish together.  I wish I could pull off her hairstyle!

I usually paint in watercolor, but this time I used acrylic.  However, I sort of used it in a watercolor way, by adding water and creating some washes.

Watercolor Sketch Portrait

The other night I wanted to do an exercise in loosening up.  Sometimes I have a tendency to tighten up my paintings when I know they are for a commission, or are going to be for sale.  I want them to be perfect, and there is always a time crunch, so I don't want to make a mistake and have to start over.  But in thinking this way, I can lose some life, spontaneity or some happy accidents in the artwork.  Plus, when you are working with really expensive watercolor paper, you don't want to ruin it.  Also, I usually need to work on smaller paper, so it will fit in my scanner.  Working small automatically makes me slow down and be more detailed.

So this night, I decided to just do a loose sketch on some inexpensive larger (14in x 17in) sketch paper.   Not for sale or a commission, just for fun.  Although I started this out simply as a pencil sketch, and this paper is not meant for watercolor, I ended up adding watercolor anyway.  It was a lot of fun, and accomplished my goal of loosening up!