A Painting A Day

Started on this tonight. This one will definitely take a few days to finish. Yes, I must have lost my mind! This is way too ambitious of me, and I have a portrait class starting tomorrow. It's also too small. I'm working on a 12x16 and her face is only an inch and a half. That makes it really difficult to put detail in. I don't know how people paint miniatures.

Here's a detail of her face so far. I'm not happy with it yet. I will try to finish the face, the torso and the hand tomorrow.

On a funny side note, my painting yesterday was on a pastel board, which made the surface way too slick and difficult to grab the paint. I learned my leasson, so today am painting on an ampersand board with a canvas finish. ;) Happy painting!

I was thinking that I would need to work on this a lot, but I liked it so much the way it is that I decided not to overwork it. I just spent a short amount of time - and didn't touch her face. I put in the earrings and the dress, and did a little to the hair. I put a little green in her hair. The color was looking blue to me, but the green was talking to me, so I went with it. So here is Marilyn finished! After I took a photo of it, I realized I forgot to include her iconic mole! I will add have to add that!

Tonight is the end of winter break, so it's back to work for me tomorrow. Also I start a six week portrait class on Tuesday, so I'm excited about that, and will blog about what I learn. Tomorrow, if I find the right picture, I plan to do another larger painting. The work seems much more substantial when it's larger. So I may not post a finished painting every day, but will post what I have accomplished each day. ;)

I have decided to paint this one a little larger. Normally I paint on a 6"x8" canvas, so the works are pretty small. That's why I'm able to do one a day. This one is four times my normal size - I'm doing this on a 12"x16" panel. I'm glad I'm doing a larger work. It's good practice, and it's fun to do something different. So this one will be spread over at least a couple of days. I will post the progress each day until it's finished.

So we are home now, and I have my regular paints, and have an easel. All those lovely things you take for granted! So day 2 of this month is another Marilyn Monroe painting. I think I finally put enough color in a face (they have been too white and washed out lately). I didn't do a very good job on her hair or her eyes, but thought the lips turned out well. Overall I'm happy with it.

In between painting Paul Newman last month, I also painted some family portraits. They were a surprise, so couldn't publish them until now. Love the picture of them posing with their portraits!

So I don't know if it's a good idea or not to post the painting next to the photo I was working from - but this is a portrait commission I did the day before yesterday, and I thought it turned out really well. However, when I post it here next to the photograph I see a dozen things I would change! I think what matters is that I was trying to capture the essence, and not the exact details. I also only had four colors to work with! The primaries and white! All things considered, I am happy with it.

It's been really hard to paint the past few days because we are out of town visiting family, and today I needed to decide who I was going to paint in January. I decided to paint Marilyn Monroe. I guess I just painted the most beautiful man who ever lived in December, so why not paint the most beautiful woman next?

I'm still using the water soluble oils, and I only brought red, blue, yellow and white with me so I have a limited palette. That's good for me though. Happy New Year! I'm hoping to take my painting to the next level this year!