Baby's Hat (Detail of painting) • Seventh Painting in the Seven-Day Challenge

Today's painting is titled "Baby's Hat." The image below shows detail of the full painting. Yesterday, while sifting through my Children's Portrait Reference folder, I came upon a photo of this baby girl. She stole my heart. I took out my sketch book and began drawing my impression of her.

Baby's Hat • Watercolor  •  © Louise Laakso Lundin 2017

The Process: Referring to the photo, I used a 6B pencil and my recycled paper sketchbook to draw her head, hair, face, features, hands, hat. I placed features carefully, aiming to keep her face a "baby face," her cheeks soft, and shadow shapes very light. I followed that up with a color sketch in my multi-media sketchbook, heavier paper.

I drew her onto a piece of Arches 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper, soaked the paper, removed some of the water and began painting wet-in-wet. The color seemed too intense (for a baby) so I scrubbed it out and set the paper to dry (to re-use down the road). I took out a second sheet, re-drew her and began painting "wet-on-dry" (wet washy paint on dry paper). Using a soft No. 10 round brush, I continued working with color and shape, trying to keep in mind the sense of sweetness of this baby.

Before and during this project, I read and re-read notes I'd written down—words by Robert Henri:
"Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing. Get the sense of a thing by feeling it at the time you work..." aiming to get beauty in color notes as in music.

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