I’ve added a few tricks to this part of the portrait.

The mouth was made separately and I didn’t add it to the portrait until I was satisfied with it.
The lips were made as two separate pieces and illustrated with three colors, brick, black  and white. I used Tsukineko inks  (Not Paint honey’s)

I auditioned two fabrics for the background. One was heavy floral and looked lovely but it wasn’t really what I was trying to portray.

You can tell that this portrait is of Frida Khalo. She represented freedom, a vivacious spirit and that to me adds up to bright colors. This piece of fabric is a Kaufman fabric. I purchased it for another project… but if fits this one perfectly.
It was difficult to place the face on this fabric because no matter how
hard I tried I ended up with a steer skull protruding from part of her
face. So if you look carefully, you will see that 4 of the skulls in
the background fabric have been colored blue to match the blue in the
rest of the background.

The face is just a small part of the portrait, I now have to complete the body…..

I don’t know if you can see the edge of the purple fabric…. you can see the white background (that means that the ink is just on the surface of the front of the fabric.)
It gives a white edge and I usually try to avoid using fabric like
this… I will be able to fix it by adding ink to the edge of the
fabric… but you can see the other fabrics look  a lot crisper…
that’s the look I prefer.