I loved seeing HM in all her pink surrounded by these flowers on the way to Westcrest Park last week. I knew I wanted to paint it later.

At first, I was going to do a quick sketch — not get all fussy. The detail-loving part of me couldn’t resist trying to get it right. Usually I sketch with a pen. This time, I used a pencil and erased and erased until it was the best I could get {even though the perspective is a little different than the photo below}.

The drawing sat around for a week. I couldn’t decide if I should use black pen or not — partly because my pen was low and I didn’t want to make a trip to Daniel Smith, and partly because I wanted to keep the softness without all the black lines running through the painting. Finally I decided to go with just the pencil and gouache — only adding a bit of fine black lines at the end for some pop here and there.

I was delighted when, upon adding the stitching on the coat, HM said, “That’s beautiful, Mommy! I love those dots you added!” So observant. She even let me add orange and yellow to her pink leggings.