Blue Haired Girl

The past couple of weeks have been a blur. Kyle and I picked up a puppy on July 6th and our lives have been forever changed. With a hiatus from working planned perfectly for the arrival of our furry baby, I had grandiose dreams of lots of blogging and painting. However, I didn't realize the magnitude of lack of sleep from having an 8 week old puppy come home with us. Despite the bags under my eyes, we are so very smitten with our pup and I will be happy to share a post about him in a couple of days.

Now that we are in the rhythm of puppy rearing I got a chance to work on some stuff and get it up on the blog.

This blue haired girl is a play on a creative series I did a few years ago. You can see similar style in this album cover illustration for Holly Finley and this starry night watercolor illustration.  For this illustration/painting I started with a watercolor piece that I scanned and then enhanced digitally using photoshop. It's always fun for me to bring a rather subdued watercolor to life with a little digital love. You can see the original base painting under the final piece below.

Below is the painting before being digitally enhanced in Photoshop. My goal was to heighten the mood of the painting by increasing the contrast and texture; making it a bit more nitty gritty.