So, an acrylic painting for a change. I ran out of proper watercolor paper and I had purchased these tiny golden fluid acrylics paints that I wanted to try out, so I decided to do this series in acrylics then.

Theme here is, since I have not been painting people for quite a while and I have also had an idea in my head on drawing some birds, thus ladies and birds = Bird ladies. First lady being now a magpie with a little bling bling. (I feel like a treasure hoarding magpie sometimes, so this bird was my first inspiration 😀 )

This time I first started by drawing the image on iPad and then printed the image in two A4 parts for tracing the lines through window. Since I used a lighter paper, the drawing printed in black lines was very clearly visible behind the paper. (usually I have just sketched some image straight to the paper)

work in progress shots:

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This is kind of a mixed media painting, mostly acrylics though. So I used mainly the Golden fluid acrylics and for golden parts Liquitex acrylic ink and also Luminance colored pencils for some details (mostly on the birds).

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Tiny drops of the fluid acrylics was enough to cover a lot of area, especially as I diluted it also with water. So I used the acrylics colors quite transparently in multiple layers. For background I did not dilute paint much and I went it through twice to get more even background.

The golden acrylic ink was a bit hard to spread evenly for larger areas, as it looked quite splotchy from different angles and then again shiny even golden surface from another. So had to use as big flat brush as possible and multiple layers. For the golden background items I also put white background first (using normal acrylic for full coverage), since without the white the gold layers looked quite dark and dirty just on top of the quinacridone magenta. (on top of skin for tattoo and jewellery I used mixes of fluid yellow oxide as first layer)

Final piece:

In general I am not that fond of the slightly glossy and plastic look of acrylics, but I think I will varnish the acrylic paintings in matte. I would like to use casein (or Acryla gouache) for more matte look (water soluble paints but water proof once dry), but I have too many different paints already.. 😀 (i.e. one day I will purchase casein..)

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