Ominous Beauty

While visiting my parents in Columbus I always have to make a Michaels run because we don't have one in the city I live in. We do have a Hobby Lobby but when it comes to wood our store has a very limited, not as good selection. To my surprise, Michaels had a couple of adult coloring books I just had to have! This image was what sold the modern tattoo book to me.

What I like about the coloring books or pattern books in general is they give you so much inspiration by having bare bones linework that you can play with an manipulate to make it more your own. This image really had it all though, there was not much tweaking to be done except her face.

I was immediately drawn to her hair, I am a sucker for hair LOL and her earring looked really interesting and of course...the roses. I am not a fan of shading flowers....I always feel like I understand how to go about doing it and then when I am actually shading there seems to be a miscommunication between my brain and my hands

This is a paper burning which is done using the same method as wood burning only on paper! In this case I used watercolor paper and debated for a while if I should add color to her or not. I was largely concerned with the roses blending too much with her hair but was able to get enough shadowing around them to popl them right out! So the only color added here is the little bit of blue to her eye, and then a tea stained background with a little bit of watercolor on the sides to create the whimsy designs.