It took me a long time to finish this project because I wasn't sure where to go with it after I finished the hair. I had no idea how I was going to delineate the facial features or both of the hands. I had no idea what colors I should use. So, I pushed it off until the last two weeks. I decided that I should stick with a similar for the body as I used for the hair, and I went with yellow. Plus, I found a lot of yellow acrylic paint in the hall-closet art supplies caddy. The first layer of yellow paint was pretty atrocious because I was using an awful old brush, so the brush marks were insane. I tried to do another layer, and then another, but the brush marks were not getting any less visible. I used some old sandpaper I found, but I think the grit was too coarse, so that didn't help much. I realized that I needed some better quality brushes, maybe even a foam brush, and I was running out of paints, so I made a trip to Michael's. I got a cheap variety pack of brushes, a big tube of yellow paint, and a small tube of pink and orange paint. I tried to do another layer with the foam brush, but there were still some pretty awful brush marks. I googled how to best get rid of brush marks when painting wood, but the video I watched pretty much just bashed acrylic paints the whole time and said that oil paints were the best -- which wasn't helpful at all because I only own acrylic paints. I explained my delimma to my dad, and he took me to Lowe's to buy very fine sandpaper (600). I proceeded to do another three layers of alternating between sanding and painting in both horizontal and vertical brush strokes with a small, fine-bristled brush. I am still not entirely satisfied with the quality of the paint job, but it is truly the best I was able to do after three days of painting over and over again.
Once I finished the paint, I went back over the black paint that is supposed to be the inside of the head because I had gotten some of the yellow on the edges. Then, I had to pause again because I had no idea what I wanted to do for the body. I knew I wanted something simple, but I didn't know what... painting the facial features and hands just seemed like a recipe for disaster when I was already fed up with painting, and I didn't see any way for me to be able to use colored pencils for anything other than the hair. I decided that the simplest, most effective way to create the shapes would be to outline them onto a piece of white paper, then color the back of the paper with thick graphite and trace the outline onto whatever colored paper I wanted to use. Then, I would cut out the shape and glue it onto the piece. I based my outlines on the features I had sketched onto the wood before I painted. I chose the bright pink color because it was a nice contrast with the yellow skin, but it also matched well with the hair. The hardest part about this process was physically placing the cut pieces onto the wood without messing up the proportions or getting glue everywhere. I know I definitely made the face too pinched together and narrow, but I couldn't tell it would end up like that until after all of the pieces were glued because I had placed them before gluing in exactly the right spots, so I thought it would turn out like I had visualized it. I am happy with how both of the hands turned out, though. Overall, I'm okay with this piece. It certainly isn't my favorite artwork I've made thus far, but I'm not totally disgusted by it. I am still struggling to figure out exactly what my content is because I sort of just ran with my initial design and never really stopped to consider what I was trying to say... I think this is because I knew it would be a very difficult internal dialogue with myself to figure out the purpose of this piece, so I just completely avoided it. My goal is to come back to the blog in a few days and make a separate post about what this piece means to me. I think I just need a few days to think.
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