Astrida's Practice

It's time for my January tradition - an Astrida painting!

Every January I paint a new portrait of this character of mine. The only major goal is to outdo the previous year's painting. This year I added an extra goal of sticking with a limited color palette, orange and purple (and some yellow and red, a bit). I really don't like orange or purple that much so this forced me to use some colors I don't often paint with.

This is the fourth year I've done this and every year I look at what I made and say to myself I can't possibly do better next year, and then I always manage to surprise myself!

Annual Astrid Painting Series:
January 2009: [link]
January 2008: [link]
January 2007: [link]
January 2006: [link]
January 2005: [link]

As for what's going on in it.. well, I just thought it would look neat. She's a very day-dreamy and apathetic character, so I imagine she'd stand around playing her violin while her city went up in flames. It fits. V V

Close up: [link]

Edit: Oh WOW a daily deviation!!!! I was out of town for the week and didn't know what to think when I came back to 640 messages in the inbox! Thank you =cryingsorceress and ^JunkbyJen ! And thank you everyone else for enjoying my art.

1.26.08 Image Update Sorry folks, I'm not a violin player and even though I used a few references, I missed some nuances about the violin's design. I've added some of the violin components that were missing and reworked the placement of some elements. I hope all you die-hard violinists find it a bit more accurate now. If not.. well, just pretend Astrida is from a far away place where violins are different.

Also, some people have pointed out that she is playing it "backwards". I didn't realize that both lefties and righties are taught to play the same way, though I did find a budding "movement" to change that! [link]

I realize I could just flip the picture and make everyone else happy, but I rather like it oriented this way and I don't think playing it "lefty" is such a bad thing. Perhaps in her world, violins come in both left-handed and right-handed varieties. Score one for handedness equality!