Rainy Days and Art...

Last night was quiet, except for the soft pitter-patter of the rain. It was the perfect atmosphere for art.  The silent stillness of the day suggested painting.  So I took out my supplies and started brainstorming. 

Since I took an art class at USC recently, I have been inspired by self-portraits and interested in attempting to create my own. So I chose a picture of myself to use as a guideline for inspiration, and traced a basic outline of my face to transfer onto a big piece of art paper.  I had a decently large stack of old magazines to "recycle" into my art, so my original plan for my portrait was to collage my whole face.  But after pasting down the scraps for my hat and facial features, I realized I would need a bunch of scraps in very specific colors to get my skin tone and hair to my satisfaction. That's when my collage idea turned into a mixed media plan.  I love the flexibility of mixed media.  Since I'm somewhat new to doing portraits, being able to use anything and everything to create a loose self-portrait was peacefully enjoyable and unbound by the restrictions of focusing on one technique.
I used oil pastels for my skin tone, then gently rubbed chalk pastels over it in hope of blending the colors together.  My shirt and the butterfly are colored pencil. I painted my hair, and for the background I tore masking tape to my liking before painting over it.

I have always liked rainy days.  They are almost always relaxing and the atmosphere they provoke usually inspires me to do art.