A Painting A Day

Ok so a winery here is having a label contest, and the name of the winery is "Delta Blues." A friend of mine asked me to enter the contest today, so I did this real quick. Seriously quick - like less than an hour and it probably shows! Haha. But there is something about the rough painting of this man that I really like. I like things not being so controlled and perfect.

Did this last night in painting from life class. Again, I didn't measure. I don't know why I refuse to do that. I was also too lazy to refresh my paints so they were kind of sticky. I ended up making the head a little larger than life size, so was unhappy with that. But I was happy with achieving a semi semblance of curly hair - and thought I got the likeness pretty close. ;)

  A good friend of mine was the model for our painting from life group last night. Again, I did not measure well enough. I did not get her nose in the right position! On the flip side, I thought I got her eyes right and was semi-happy with the skin tones.

Ann Enoch (who hosts our life painting group in her studio) gave me the absolute coolest thing tonight! A red acetate frame! She was sitting next to me, and I commented on how nice and glassy she made the models eyes and Anne looked at my painting and she immediately recognized the problem - my highlights weren't bright enough! She gave me the red acetate frame to look through to help judge my values. I was blown away by how much it helped. Before using it, my painting looked so flat - there was no life in it. Using the acetate I saw that I wasn't making my highlights light enough!
Love this group! I learn so much from them!
As for the painting - I really liked it while I was there but I think subconsciously I knew I needed to work on her mouth more. In particular the right side that is in shadow is too bright red - I should have toned it down with some green or made it more purple. Also her mouth was not as crooked as I made it in the painting. To be honest with myself, I was thinking that the crook in her mouth gave her character - when in actuality her mouth was much straighter. I need to quit adding things that aren't there and stick to painting what really IS there. But on the other hand ... hmmm... there IS no other hand!

I experimented with this, and really liked how it turned out. I have been reading Kintsler's "Painting Portraits" and his backgrounds are turpentine washes or vignettes - so I had to restrain myself but I tried to stay abstract on everything but the face. Even on the hands, I just used a few brush strokes to suggest them - rather than paint every detail (like I usually do).

I tried to make the focal point the face, but I think that making the doll lighter than the rest of the painting shifted the focus somewhat from the face. I am still pondering that.

 This was a rather large work for me - a 24" x 30". I started on it yesterday, and finished it today. I was working from a very tiny photo. I ran out and got a frame for it because the artist group I am in will be exhibiting at Folks Folly - a really nice restaurant here in Memphis starting tomorrow, so I wanted to put this in the exhibit. :)

Did this today - and was really happy with how it turned out. I was working from a black and white photo so made up the colors. Also in the photo her dress had a pattern and it I started to do it, but it was just too busy and competed with the scarf, so I tried to make the dress suede. This is a pretty large work (for me) - it's 18" x 24" on canvas.

I recently bought a book called "Portraits from Life in 29 Steps" by John Howard Sanden. I opened it, and honestly couldn't put the book down until I had read the entire thing. That is the sign of a great book! So armed with my new knowledge, I went to live painting group tonight and tried to put what I had learned to practice. I think this is my best live painting portrait yet - and while I still have soooo much farther to go, I was pleased with my progress.