Face #16 of the '29 Faces' May Challenge:

Art Journal Entry:  Mixed Media inspired by 'Great Expectations':  Pip and Miss Haversham

For my Face for Day 16 of the '29 Faces' Challenge, I am featuring here my completed tribute, as painted in my art student's art journal, to Charles Dickens' famous story, 'Great Expectations'.....

When I uploaded this previously, I had the portrait of Pip sorted out, but still had not made up my mind as to whether the female was the character of 'Miss Haversham', or that of her adopted daughter, 'Estella'.   Well, as anyone familiar with the story should be able to make out by now, 'Miss Haversham' turned out the victor....

Poor Pip.  An orphan raised in poverty by his abusive older sister, he falls under the influence of the neurotic but wealthy spinster, Miss Haversham.  Jilted by her fiance on her wedding day many years earlier, Miss Haversham never got over the trauma of being abandoned at the alter.  An eccentric recluse who refuses to wear anything other than her ancient, lacy wedding dress (or indeed to even clean up the decades-old, mouse-riddled remains of her uneaten wedding feast), Miss Haversham plots to get her revenge against all men by meticulously raising her beautiful adopted daughter, Estella, to become a reptilian-hearted man-hater.  Her evil grooming works.  Sadly, the befuddled Pip falls hopelessly in love with Estella, but goes on to have his heart pulverized when he realizes both  that (#1) Miss Haversham is NOT behind the anonymous funds he receives from a mysterious benefactor, as he had initially assumed (and she had allowed him to believe), and (#2) that Estella can't and will never return his affections.  Ouch!  Poor, poor Pip...!

And so I tried to portray the characters here by expression -- plus as you can see I had lots of fun with the mixed media (lots and lots of lace!)....