A 60's portrait

In the beginning of 2010, aquarellista and gifted artist Bibbi Isaksson joined in on a project that we started, with the intention to make a personal impression in aquarelle, inspired on a photo of a loved one...  

Bibbi chose this photo

The first stage

Somehow she wasn't happy with it (although we all liked it a lot) and I guess all of you recognise this. A good thing to do if you aren't pleased with your unfinished aquarelle, or not sure where to go next, is to take scraps of aquarelle paper and paint on them what you think might be a good next step and put that on top of your painting. That's what Bibbi did - and she also happens to understand Photoshop and tried some things out with that:

Sunglasses added on the girl - and decision that that is not the solution...

That's so good about testing a next step this way. Same goes for backgrounds and bright colours and other 'risky' changes:if you put them on for real you can't get rid of them in our transparent medium aquarelle...

The next step - the couple gets more shape and colour and they are in love a bit more

But Bibbi was not satisfied with the way this was going and did the other thing that we can recommend: put your painting away and don't look at it for some time! Sometimes paintings grow beautiful in a couple of weeks or months without you doing anything to them, apart from not-looking. And sometimes after some time you just know what should be done...

So in April, Bibbi picked it up again and decided to add a more sixties athmosphere

And last month she finished this aquarelle! It has taken half a year and it has truly grown - into a very rich picture, full of memories, layers, songs and symbols.

Added to that - it has the outlook of a beautiful poster, with colours deep and strong.

The bottomline: if your aquarelle is "ok",  but you are not happy, don't give up! Put it away, discuss it with friends, use scraps of paper to see what certain colours would look like, use photoshop (if you can) to check creative next steps and often you will get to something you are indeed happy with...

Or at least you will have learned! And if it ends up being ruined for sure, don't worry be happy! Use it to light the fire, or tear it up and keep the nice parts for a next venture!