The great baby hair battle

My fabulous teacher, Ms Cathy, suggested that I should try painting with acrylics.  Being little ol' "I like to bite off more than I can chew" me, I decided that I would paint a woman holding a baby.  This was a great idea - except in all my life I've never drawn a woman, let alone a baby.  And I have most certainly never tried to paint one!

My goodness - Do you have any idea how hard people are to draw for mere mortals like me? Even now, I'm still freaked out over how hard the hands were to draw.  Arrrrrgggghhhh!  Still, I persisted and soon enough I felt like all was going relatively well.  A bit here, a bit there - a dab here, a splat there.  Until..... I got to painting the baby hair.  Nothing worked.  Seriously.  Over the period of one hour my baby was:

• Comb-over baby;
• stripey hair baby;
• blonde-frizzy-I've-just-stuck-my-finger-in-a-light-socket-baby; and
• bald baby.

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING(!) worked.  The frustration was starting to get to me. Being impatient, I decided in the end that I should just combine all four elements together.  And it was better.   I struggled with a title for my first masterpiece and asked for suggestions.  Beautiful ideas sprang forth from family and friends, but I felt that I needed to pay homage to the struggle that this painting presented.  Finally, in an instant like a lightbulb shorting out in my brain, THE title came to me.

As such, readers, I present to you the long awaited title of this painting ....

 Mother and Blonde-Stripey-Comb-Over-Bald Baby

We like? ;-)

The finished picture is something I actually am quite proud of.  Not because it is perfect.  Not because it is necessarily even good, but because it is something that I created from a vision and saw it through to the bitter, messy, stripey end.