Practice

It has taken me about four days to work through the process, that involved doing two pieces, to get this result.  The piece is based on a digital or painted image of an African woman.  The creator's name is unavailable.

The first part of the process involved a sketch done in mechanical pencil (HB core) filled in with watercolor.  That medium did not work well for the piece.  That is because the skin color was too hard to mimic with watercolor in addition to the needed shading.  So, I gave up on that piece--keeping it as a learning reference.

The second effort finished today was also sketched with mechanical pencil (HB core) and has been painted in with acrylics.  Some eye work and other line work has been done with black Muji pen, and the decorative body lines were created with a neon yellow Sakura Gelly Roll Pen. That Gelly Roll Pen was the only type (of my water-resistant, permanent and water-soluble pens with fine nibs) that could create the color intensity over the brown. 

This is the first piece I've worked on with a magnifying glass in order to do some fine line work for the eyes.  They are so small (width is < 0.5 in.) that it was hard to work on them otherwise.  The background treatment also took some time to decide on -- after asking for and receiving some feedback from a group of artist friends.  Ultimately, the background has been kept subtle to keep the focus on the figure.  

I'm pleased with this result and am calling it done!