Daisies and Oboe

 Oh, masking fluid, how I love thee! How come I had never even HEARD of you until some weeks ago? My life would have been so much easier! Especially when I was painting this piece here.
So. Thanks to the wonderful masking fluid*, doing the background was a lot of fun! Yes, I COULD have done it without it, but it would be much less clean, and it would have involved a lot more frustration and swearing on my part.

Anyway. I painted these for my parents, as a thank you gift for helping us so much with our big move to Germany. Getting paperwork in order, organizing what we already had at their place, passing on the electricity and water contracts on to our name... And of course, helping us to set everything up now we're here.
So, I'll say it again: Thank you SO much, we really, really appreciate it! ♥ ♥ ♥

By the time you read this (I'm writing this like, a month ago), we should just have arrived in our new home! Wheeeeeee! =D

Both illustrations are meant as a diptych (as you can see), with the daisies and notes flowing from one to the other. The daisies, because my mother's name is Margarita, which means "daisy" in Spanish. And because she's Mexican, it felt right to paint a darker skinned female character.
The oboe and the music notes because my dad plays the oboe at various amateur concerts.
By the way, what a complicated instrument to draw! And I had never noticed how steampunk-y an oboe looks. I hope I got it about right, I had lots of reference photos, but there might still be mistakes.

Yeah. So. I really like how they turned out. Hope you do, too! ^^


*Masking fluid: It's a liquid you paint on like, well, paint, wherever you want to leave white areas. When it dries, it becomes solid and rubbery, and you can paint over it with watercolors without fear of messing up your beautiful white areas. When you're done, you just rub the stuff off carefully (a kneaded eraser works great!).
A word of warning, though: Do not use one of your good brushs for this, as the masking fluid can easily ruin your brush as it dries.