Painting Russian Dolls 2

I've made a start on these as planned. They are based loosely on the card I made when my daughter had her first baby last year - I did a cartoon of the small family as Russian dolls and it suddenly occurred to me last week that it would be fun to paint some 3D ones for Christmas. I found some blank, unpainted wooden dolls on ebay and they arrived a couple of days ago from Russia.

Painting Russian Dolls - one down and 3 to go :>)

and before it was coloured

Thank you Sarah for the great tips on how you would tackle these :>) - I liked the idea of a felt pen, something I rarely use as it's too graphic for most of my work, but for these, perfect.

I decided not to prime them to start with as I really wanted the wood to come through in places - I like wood :>)

I sketched it out roughly in pale coloured pencil - it was to hand! and rather liked the way it worked on the wood. It can also be erased. Then I outlined freely in the felt pen and filled some of the hair in.

At that point I decided that rather than go for paint or ink, I'd continue in coloured pencil, building layers of different colours to add interest. It was possible to build quite intense colour.

I will finish it off with spray varnish after using fixative - I think that should keep it ok.

As you can see I'm not a planner! I have a rough idea (lots of sketches of different ideas) of where I'm going, options and possibilites and things evolve. I think partly because my left brain is probably atrophied and I'm totally right brained and partly because if I know exactly where I'm going ....... there's almost no point bothering, the journey to completion just isn't as interesting and can become a chore rather than a challenge and a pleasure.

Also, working in 3D has extra problems to solve. like back and side views.

what do you think?

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