If you’ve already done the hard work on a drawing, the rest goes fast. Plus, I was truly inspired doing this, so I spent more of my time on it.

As I worked in it, I decided to use metallic pencil. That’s something I normally don’t do, because I always envisioned selling my work as prints. But as I did it in this, I decided to make the picture more like a medieval icon. I made her robe the blue of lapis lazuli, for instance.

I’m very pleased with this. Soon, I will be entering a juried competition, and although it costs money (something I rarely do, unless it’s free), I will be entering “Black Madonna”. I feel I have a good chance at this show, I’m familiar with the people jurying it, and they have seemed to like my work in the past.