My most recent painting was done in only a few days (and I’m not entirely happy with it as a result) but when I saw this book cover of Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me The Waltz (right), I had such an urge to do my own version of it that I got a bit carried away…

As usual, I’ve done my normal thing of adding extra colour and – as I’m sure some people would see it – “ruining” the delicate Art Nouveau quality with some garish lines, metallic pen and not-entirely-historically-accurate curves. I also changed it from portrait to landscape so I could have less hand, no title, and more hair action. 🙂

This painting is more me than the original, and I also brought a few autobiographical details into it, in the form of the nose stud and three of my many rings – one from Belfast covered market, one from Cambridge Strawberry Fair, and one from a holiday years ago in Mexico…(I like my rings to remind me of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, if possible).

I’m not entirely happy with it, bits of it are clumsy and didn’t entirely work out exactly how I’d imagined.

It also took me a frustratingly long time to get the skin tone right (and I’m still not 100% on it). It’s also kind of space-agey for no real reason (other than I kind of liked where it was going, silver-pen wise), and very girly (but what else is new?!) but actually, considering how badly I thought it was going when I first started painting it, I think it just about works!

As an experiment with silver pen, shades of purple, pink and blue, and as another practice run with my new paints (I’m still getting used to their thickness and colour when they dry) I’m happy.

Now to decide what to work on next….:)

[Zelda Fitzgerald, purple hair edition (c) Hannah Thompson, acrylic with metallic silver pen]