A Painting A Day

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.

Okay soooo am trying a little sculpture. I am using an old photo of my son in his football jersey. Its extremely hard to get a likeness of him in clay. I really need other photos from the side at least - and my son is so much older now that I don't know if he can model for me. But it's fun to experiment with other media.

  We had a new model at live painting class tonight. She has very beautiful features and lovely skin tones. I don't think I have the right side of her face dark enough. I think I'm still a little scared of going all out and actually painting what I see. Hopefully I will gain the courage to do it next time!

  I've never done a baby painting before, but this one reminded me so much of one of my baby sisters (when they were babies of course - now they're old women!) that I just had to give it a shot. This is just a small study - a 6" x 8". I did a lot of things different on this. I put some different colors in my palette like a pre mixed violet, permanent rose, and raw umber. The other thing I did was actually mix the colors before I started painting. That saved a ton of time - whipped this out in just under an hour, and I thought it made the skin tones turn out better because I wasn't mixing them on the fly.

I was on a painting frenzy yesterday! Two paintings in one day! Love it! So first let me preface this by saying, this is not a moviestar! Haha! When I was painting it I was trying to reveal the emotion in her eyes.