.Fraise.
My final assignment for Drawing II: Create a peice of art that incorporates in some way the following elements...

a) Jan Vermeer's "Head of a Girl in a Turban"
b) The color red in a significant way
c) a floral pattern
d) at least five letters of text

So here you see what I came up with. I cropped Vermeer's painting in very close to focus on my favorite part. Books and films might draw everyone's attention to her earring, but I'd hate for people to be missing out on what I feel is a very hot set of lips.

At first I had trouble coming up with a good 5+ letter word. My attempts either yielded words that were too short or too vague or that didn't look quite right when filling the space. So I turned instead to my good friend Elisabeth in hopes of... well, I would say serendipity, except that the definition of serendipity is compromised by the fact that I was looking for it. The point is, I avoided telling her exactly why I was asking for a 5-6 letter word, which prevented her from relying too heavily on my own interpretation of my artwork. After a few of her submissions, I requested that she switch to French. She promptly supplied me with "fraise" which she informs me means "strawberry." I liked the mental image of a sweet and succulent fruit as a parallel to the focus on the lips and neck of the young woman. When I typed the word into Photoshop to test it out on my thumbnail, I was thrilled with the way it filled the space. Thus, the concept was complete.

It was all executed in watercolor, except for the little bit of green reflected light on the jawline, which is soft pastel placed with a rub of my finger. Oh, and you might notice that I am not yet a pro at cutting my own mattes. Note the imperfections in the corners. I kinda like them.