New Year, New Project!

Hi everyone!
So it's all been a bit hectic since I started Uni and I haven't really had the chance to do any painting or upload any new content to the blog, but that's all about to change!
The corner of my student room is now full of boxes of paint and canvases and I'm already starting on my first big project of 2014! Thought I'd share with you the first few photos of the initial ideas and the start of the canvas :)
Also, yesterday I changed the name and URL of the blog to 'Lauren Does Art', so be sure to change any bookmarks/follows now to laurendoesart.blogspot.co.uk :)
 Anyway, back to the photos!

So first off, these are the photos I printed off which acted as a kind of moodboard. As you can see, the main idea was florals! The photo in the bottom centre is actually the print from an Urban Outfitters dress I have, I figured it was pretty enough to be turned into a painting!

This is the initial sketch for the painting, just quickly in pastels and black and white acrylic.

Next up, I did a larger mock-up, this time focusing more on the detail of the flowers, the composition and working out a more limited colour palette. As you can see, the trees which were in the foreground of the initial sketch have disappeared, I was too scared to just paint over the top of the flowers once I had finished, haha! I'm still undecided whether I'll include the trees or not, or whether to just keep it as it is; what do you think?

Next, after copiously covering my carpet in newspaper to avoid a painty carpet and an angry landlord (!), I sketched out the canvas and started painting. It's difficult to tell the scale from this photo, but the canvas is about 2'x3'.

And that's as far as I've got so far, but I'm working on it whenever I have spare time, so I'll keep you guys posted! As always, let me know what you think in the comments, I always love reading them :)

Lauren x