Such a dummy!

I stumbled across a pregnant torso mannequin/dummy recently and knew then and there I had to take her home and practice something I have admired for some time... belly painting.
While she isn't exactly life size, more like a pregnant teenager, at least she has bumps in all the right places

So, I painted the shoulder first - just trying to get the hang of the tattoo style roses, then the belly. Afterwards I wished I had painted the background sparkle yellow under the shoulder roses as well, but never mind... it's only a practice afterall.
But I just don't know if it's finished. Should I paint something in the middle of the belly to complete the picture, or leave it as it is? And if I was to paint in the middle... what would I do? What would you do?

This design is REALLY lovely. I guess if you were painting on someone who had decided on the the name of their baby who could add the name.

leave it like that..it's beautiful! you could add a name..or a heart..

I agree...looks beautiful & I think the suggestions are great!

awesome job. Now if only the belly moved like the little babes do when you paint mommy's belly. Then it would be perfect.

Pretty!
How about trying a bit of a subtle swirl of maybe gold and silver or gold and metalic white in the middle?

Love it! Nice the pink, yellow combination!

My DP, ever encouraging as he is, said it didn't look finished. He said it was a great frame but was missing something. I kind of agree but finding the right image/graphic to use in this context just escapes me. I had considered the baby's name, or perhaps the family/parents names... a love heart, a butterfly.... I don't know, but it would have to be in style with the roses. Thanks for your feedback. It's nice to have a bit of encouragement. I always have to prod DP to give me any sort of feedback. So frustrating. Thank goodness for forums, eh?

Beautiful! How'd you come by the dummy? You can buy then for a pretty penny at a lot of the face painting stores online....

I was at Bec Anthony's Sydney workshop in October, which was hosted by Julie at Making Faces. She has shelves stacked high with pretty colours, paints, glitters, balloons, etc, etc for sale. It was hard to know where to look. Too tempting for me I'm afraid. I bought the torso from her shop for $25 and then had to take her home on a 5 hour bus trip. Funny... I wondered what people were thinking. I know there are places you can pick them up from for next to nothing (eg. 2nd hand shopfitters supplies), but there's nothing like that in my part of the world so I thought the investment would be worthwhile. I'll keep practicing and when I have a few examples, I'll post them to my facebook page and see if I can pick up a real job out of it

I agree with Fun2Play. It does look like a beautiful picture frame and so it needs something in the middle. If it was a real client rather than a form, that's I'd be asking them what they wanted there.

A baby dragon coming out of an egg (my personal favourite). A bird in a nest, a jewel, a teddy bear, a fairy, a large centerpiece flower. Anything really.

Hmmmm, given the sunset gold center, a black silhouette fairy would look lovely inside that frame.