Another Portrait Challenge

 

After a week of "hiding" I'm back to blogging. After the murder of Alex Pretti I didn't feel like writing any posts at all. I was sickened, sad, angry, mad as hell - all at the same time. I don't know how you deal with all of what is happening in our country right now; I have a hard time with it. Long walks help, talking with friends, watching German movies, escaping into books.

Thankfully Nicole's new challenge was looming just around the corner and up to then I had successfully procrastinated. No more! It was the most welcome escape.

I had decided to try my portrait painting "skills" with the help of a photo of my daughter that I took during her stay with us in June of last year.

On Gene's blog and then on Nicole's I had read about a tracing method using oil pastels and I wanted to try it out. Wow, it works like a charm!

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture what the traced face looked like. Like with the self-portrait challenge I used watercolors again. It's a medium that I don't "master" at all, but I find it so fascinating. If I don't practice it, I will never learn it. That includes painting something that is not necessarily "good" or "pretty" or whatever word you want to attribute to it. There are only two progress photos.

The ugly stage:

This was the moment that I stepped away from it. How do you eliminate those lines and rough edges? How do you control the amount of water? Practice practice practice...

Better:

Those eye lashes are for real! Look at the photo - she is so lucky to have these long and dense lashes. She never uses mascara (like her mom, she doesn't use any make up except for a lipstick every now and then) since they always look so beautiful. She got these from her dad - it was one of the first things I noticed about him when we had our first cup of coffee together (thanks HP for those coffee corners).

Finally I thought I was done. I was afraid to ruin it if I would "doctor" it more. I'm not too unhappy with it. Here it is, joining FFO.

Nicole, thank you for this new challenge. It took me several days to paint, it was frustrating and fun at the same time. I'm glad that I did it even though there was a time in between when I was tempted to throw my watercolors and brushes out the window. Good thing I didn't!

Wonky Lion Woman

Another lesson at the Art Soul Gathering that I watched was Jenny Grant's "Soulful Grunge". Jenny Grant who lives in Sweden was a new artist to me. In her session she created a great mixed media close-up face spread over two pages in an art journal (the art journal itself was a piece of art!). It was unusual, but I was also intrigued by it. So I tried creating my own piece.

Oh well...

It did not turn out the way I envisioned it at all. Nevertheless, I tried and that counts as positive in my book. This was such an interesting project that I want to try it again, maybe with a completely different approach - and less paint. I found Jenny's way to paint the eyes interesting - she didn't paint the pupils but just hints of them and I wanted to do that as well. It didn't quite work out - I actullay spent quite some time with those eyes - but it was interesting and I still learned a lot. And I think it's totally okay to show something that is not a masterpiece.

The longer I looked at this woman, the more I actually saw a lion than a woman - despite the human nose and the black-grey hair and all. So I call this the Wonky Lion Woman. Her name is Henrietta. I hope Iris will appreciate this.

This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off where I'm sure you will see more intersting and beautiful faces.

Touch of the Moon

 

A week ago I started watching Art Soul Gathering, a free online art retreat hosted by Ida Andersen Lang. The instructor of the first lesson was Melanie Rivers, an artist I like very much, who was the reason that I signed up for this. We were painting a face forward portrait with the moon in the background by using acrylic paints with a limited color palette. Since I didn't have the exact colors Melanie used, I chose Payne's Gray, Titanium White, Prism Violet and Alizarin Crimson Hue. I have never worked much with violet, but since I like the combination of purple and red I thought these might be good colors.

I was glad that the woman had her eyes closed - it was hard enough for me to paint the face without worrying about the eyes. Very soon I realized that violet was not the best choice I made, so I used more of the Alizarin Crimson that I mixed with the Payne's Gray and also the Titanium White. Violet got on the moon to show that actually there was only a sliver of the moon. Since you can't really see this I decided to draw black swirls in the moon - I do like swirls and they often turn up in my art making. Melanie used filbert brushes which I did at first as well, but I prefer painting with round brushes. I didn't get quite the result with the filbert and therefore after a while changed to a round brush. Do you prefer a brush over another?

This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off. This has really encouraged me to try paint more faces.

Confidence

Today I don't have a new face for Nicole's Friday Face Off, so I'm returning to a painting from 2013. This was my first try painting on a wood panel and also the first time that I worked with tissue paper. I liked the effect it had when it crinkled up after I had glued it down. It gave a lot of texture.

Now, the portrait is nothing to write home about. I see all the flaws in it - and still, this is one of my favorite paintings in all its imperfection. The inspiration came from the "Botswana" catalog of the Swedish company I wrote about in my last post.

I called this painting "Confidence" because this is what this woman represents for me. It also stands for growing more confident in myself as an artist.