Watercolour: Rehana

I've been working flat-out lately, but today I sent off some work, before deadline, and since it's a Sunday, they couldn't send me any more until at least tomorrow. So, Day Off!! I was able to have fun and paint this portrait, that I had been sketching and inking bit by bit as rewards for working over the past week and a half. 

This is my lovely friend Rehana. She just got married a week ago, and I took the photograph I based this little portrait on at her mendhi night. I've given them a custom wedding portrait for their wedding present, and I'm looking forward to drawing or painting the happy couple in a more refined portrait, but for now, I've just done this little piece, purely as relaxation. I had a great time at her Mendhi (and at her wedding), and I like to do little portraits of friends, especially when they help me to remember fun times. 
Rehana was one of my portraiture subjects way back in TEE Art (10 years ago!) so I drew her a lot then. It was lovely to revisit her as a subject. 

It's not ultra-refined, which means it doesn't have as much sparkle as I would like (her entire dress was sparkly beads and sequins) and it's not a 100% perfect likeness, but I had a lot of fun doing it. I've been doing digital linework for weeks and weeks, it was lovely to splash the paint around a bit and not really worry about the results!

Here's the inked version, before I started painting:

I'm not quite sure how long it took. Probably somewhere in the 4-6 hour region, but I wasn't working steadily for a lot of that time. Generally I was watching tv at the same time. It's a fairly quick piece, anyway. 

This is in a small Moleskine watercolour sketchbook, so it's about A5. 

I did the inking with Copic Multiliner pens and most of the painting with Winsor and Newton watercolours, with details added with gouache, a sepia Pigma Micron pen and Copic Opaque White.