11 March 2024

More in the theme

Continuing very loosely with the same theme (goddesses? mythological characters? yeah, something like that), and with the same size and medium, I did go outside the color palette on this one, although there is still a tiny bit of each of the colors (Cobalt Orchid, Light Ultramarine, Red Oxide) in this one. But my primary objective was to use this beautiful and subtle Titan Green Pale from Golden Acrylics as a background for a goddess of equally subtle coloring: Ngame, the West African moon goddess. Ngame created the heavenly bodies and brought life and soul into every living thing with her beams. She is known as the White Goddess, according to Robert Graves, and is also considered a muse, a patroness of creative inspiration, so it seemed appropriate to make a painting of her!

As my model I chose someone I have painted once before, the beautiful Diandra Forrest. I first cast her (in watercolor with an acrylic background) as Akata Witch from Nnedi Okorafor's book, back in 2022, but for that painting I used a much younger reference photo (the character in the book is 14). But for Ngame I chose a mature photo, although I still went with the free-flowing shock of hair rather than the short cut or the long braids she sometimes wears.

I started out uniformly pale and then integrated subtle bits of all the colors, one by one, into the painting. As an albino person Diandra's skin tone is a very particular tint: It's not pink, not olive, but rather a distinctive shade of creamy white, with underlying green, blue, and lavender tones, and the shadows look brown, rather than gray. It's both fun and challenging to paint.

I enjoyed playing with a new tool to get her hair just right: I had ordered some plastic scrapers meant to be used with Gelli plates that one of my Let's Face It teachers had recommended for making stripes or patterns in oil paint, and I used one of them to "scumble" the colors together and put some texture into her soft cloud of hair.

The green is an unusual color to use for background when depicting a moon goddess in front of the full moon (one automatically thinks black, deep blue, gray, or sunset colors), but there is that moment just before dusk when the sky isn't quite blue or gray when you might see this shade in it, and I decided it was okay to accentuate that a bit. I did try glazing over it with light ultramarine, but it didn't really work, so I wiped off most of it, just leaving some to be the darker shadows on the surface of the moon.

I thought about adding some gold medium onto the moon, like I did in my last few portraits (as halos), but decided it would take away from the primary focus (Ngame), so I left it off.




"Ngame"—acrylics on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.

(Note: My scanner cut off a bit of the top left corner and also a tiny strip of her shoulder on the right—the original doesn't have the moon falling off the page up there quite as much, and also shows more of her arm. I have to do these in two pieces and put them together in Photoshop Elements, since my scanner bed is 9x12 and these are 12x16.)





03 March 2024

Sort of a theme?

I continued this week with using the same color palette and with exploring mythological themes for a new painting. I had a vague recollection of reading one worldview in which the Moon is a Triple Goddess, with the waxing (growing) moon being the maiden, the full moon as the mother, and the waning moon representing the crone. Although I wasn't entirely comfortable with the symbology—are middle-aged women only worthwhile if they are mothers? and are crones really "waning" or diminished in some way? I think not. Nevertheless, the idea, preoccupied as I was last week by the maiden portrait of Proserpine, stuck in my head, and then I came across a reference photo that seemed like a cross between a goddess and a saint, subject of the portrait I painted before that one (Saint Side-Eye), so I decided I could take this vague legend and make something fun from it, even if I disagreed with its characterizations.

The result is this woman in the full flush of the middle of her life, cheerfully giving a blessing. I dressed her in the red oxide color I've been using, thinking of a Blood Moon, and gave her a necklace that harks back to an early witchy symbol for the three-part goddess. And then, just for fun, I also gave her a halo of sorts. (I thought about hanging a blood moon in the upper left corner, but finally decided it was too literal, and maybe also overkill. But...?)

The painting went smoothly until I got to the decorative bits. I did an undercoat of the red oxide on the necklace before putting on the gold metallic acrylic medium, because in the painting of Saint Side-Eye I liked the effect of the red peering through the gold, and I thought it would go nicely with her dress; but for some reason it was harder to get the gold to cover the red here. It also looked flat, which was perfect for the saint's halo but not for a necklace, so I ended up giving it some highlights and dark edges with regular paint.

I didn't want to undercoat the halo red first, because it would be too stark against the light ultramarine background, so I went in directly with the gold paint over the blue, but it didn't work at all. Then I decided to put a film of white paint over it, but that just killed the glow. So I coated it again with the gold over the white, but that was splotchy and looked like she had made herself a homemade halo out of a paper plate or something. So I went back in with the blue background color and, instead of an unbroken perfect halo, I did a sort of "rays" effect with alternating blue and gold, so that it became an extension of her blond hair. I'm not completely happy with it, but I think it works okay.

The only other element with which I had a problem was her gaze. In the reference photo it is a direct look at the viewer, but no matter how conscientiously I tried to duplicate it, I couldn't get her to look at me! I have noted this problem before, and still haven't figured it out. I would have liked the portrait much better if I could have achieved it here, though, as she had such a friendly, cheerful, intimate glance.



This is "Selene"—acrylics and gold medium on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.



13 February 2024

Old medium, new technique

Lat week's LFI2024 lesson was with watercolorist Unyime Edet, and it was an adventure in using a familiar medium in an unfamiliar manner. First and foremost, he paints with a flat brush, which I have never done in watercolor—the general approved method for watercolor is round, with a point. Second, he paints the darks first, layering up to the light instead of starting light and adding in the darks in layers. It's challenging to save the whites when you work like this, but it also gives dramatic contrasts. I also liked that he noted the actual colors you use don't matter, it's more about capturing the values, dark to light. I follosed his lead in using a deep purple for the darks, and I think it worked well.

The reference photo he used for the lesson didn't appeal to me that much, so I decided to be my usual impudent self and paint the teacher instead. This is my rendition of Unyime, using his flat-brush technique and starting with the darkest darks on the left side of his face. I lost some of the whites and lights I wanted to save, but overall I was surprised at how effective it can be to paint with a flat brush, defining planes rather than blending. I didn't do his technique justice, but I made a start on it, and his was a fun image to capture.



"Unyime"—pencil and watercolor on coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

08 February 2024

Classical imagining

In my leisure reading this past week was a reference to Persephone (in the Greek) or Proserpina (Roman), the ostensible reason for seasons on Earth. Since seasons are much on my mind (my heater still doesn't work and it's COLD in this house), I dwelt a little longer on the legend than I normally would, and it inspired a portrait. Since the color palette in my last one was so successful, I thought it would be fun to use similar tones in this one, perhaps creating a series. They don't really go together that much, given that the subject in the last one had dark, warm, rich skin tones and is portrayed as a saint, and the subject for this one is about as pale as a white girl can get and comes from Greek/Roman myth; but I used the eggplant color (Cobalt Orchid) from Saint Side-eye's shirt as the background here, and picked up the rust color (Red Oxide) from the saint's background in this one's hair and the fruit in her hands.

Lest you have forgotten the legend, Hades, lord of the underworld, has a crush on Earth Mother Demeter's daughter, Persephone, and kidnaps her. Demeter loses her shit and quits minding the climate, with the result that things on earth die and freeze—generally not so great for the populace. So her daddy, Zeus, tells Hades to return their daughter, but because she ate some pomegranate seeds while downstairs, Hades is able to enforce at least a partial stay with him every year. During those four months when she is being queen in the underworld, Demeter mourns and the earth experiences winter; when she returns topside, temps warm, flowers bloom, the ground produces a bountiful harvest, and Mommy is happy. A little more dramatic story than Punxsutawney Phil, and vastly more paintable!

Although most of the classical pictures portray her as more mature, wearing formal dress and a diadem, she is always described as a maiden and, as the story goes, she is "playing" in a field of flowers with her nymph buddies when Hades makes off with her. So I chose to paint her as a young, fresh-faced girl—sweet, but maybe a little awkward and not quite a woman yet. She traditionally has either blonde or red hair and blue eyes, so the color scheme I had chosen worked for the hair. Rather than a fancy dress with a jeweled bodice, as she usually wears, I put her in a simple shift the color of a Luna moth to signify spring; she is holding the pomegranate that was her downfall.

For some reason, this is one of the hardest portraits I have painted to date. Part of the reason is that because I am working in a familiar size and format (12x16) but portraying most of her torso, everything was a little smaller than I usually work (facial features in particular), but that doesn't entirely account for the difficulty. I think I just didn't know where exactly I was going with this one, so it simply took longer and required some decisions that I ended up taking back. The narcissus is "her" flower, so I thought I'd paint one tucked into her headband, but I knew it was a mistake the minute it was finished—it completely drew focus from her face and the fruit in her hands, which are the dual points of the entire portrait. So I sanded it with some fine sandpaper to take off the raised paint and restored it to flowerless simplicity.

I think that deep orchid color works great to signify that she's in the underworld, and the white and light blue highlights on the dress and headband make her glow.




"Prosperpina"—acrylics on thin birch board, 12x16 inches. (I prefer this name, in the end, to Persephone, because when I was a kid I read it out loud literally as "Percy-fone" and was embarrassed when I found out I was wrong!)



31 January 2024

Let's Face It lesson...kinda

This week's Let's Face It 2024 lesson was with the adorable Misty Segura-Bowers. She did it in oil, but those of us who prefer acrylic were encouraged to use that. I picked a fairly limited palette, though not as limited as Misty's, and followed basic procedure, but ended up changing the final product a bit. I used my own reference photo instead of hers, and rather than making it 12x12, mine is 12x16, because I wanted the opportunity to isolate the space around the head from the space around the body so I could have some fun with it.

I have painted from this specific reference before, in my Deb Weiers-inspired phase back two years ago right after I took her class, but that was a whole different kind of fun from this one!

Misty used Cadmium red as her base and then did a thin overlayer of raw umber, but I had just bought an enticing color called Red Oxide, which came out a few shades darker, so I painted my background with that. (I also don't like using Cadmium colors, even though they say the level is so low in paint that it's not toxic. Why risk it?)

Misty used a grid and sketched in the figure upside down with raw umber, filling in sections as she went; I don't really like working with a grid (it's a pain to remove it when you're done using it), so I did a rough outline trace using white pan pastel, and then free-handed the rest.

This was a challenging portrait in many ways. Painting a darker complexion on top of a very dark background meant it was hard for me to see the contrasts, so I kept getting things either too light or too dark and having to color-correct. In doing so, I lost some of the spontaneity of my earlier marks. The best part of the portrait may be her shirt, because I painted that quickly and using broad strokes, without fussing too much with blending or defining.

Her bald head was also difficult, because part of the darker shadows on the back-side of her head are actually a faint fuzz of hair growing in; but I didn't want to get itsy with that, so I made it smooth. I had a few false starts, too, with how light the lightest lights should be against the rest, and using what color; I started out with more of a Naples yellow, but it didn't look right, so I switched over to Titan Mars Pale, mixed with a little burnt umber. The darkest darks in this thing were supposed to be raw umber, but I discovered I was out (how did I let myself run out of that essential color?!), so I mixed the burnt umber with some Cobalt violet and a teensy bit of Payne's gray and made do. All of this was made more subjective because the reference photo is in black and white! (Misty's was, too, and I thought I should play by that rule on mine, even though it was a different model.)

The gold halo is a Liquitex metallic medium. I really wanted to add this, but I'm not sure whether I thus ruined the painting. I did like the simplicity of it before, but I had this idea of giving it an iconographic feel, so I went for it. Parenthetically, someday I would like to try gold leaf instead. I used gold leaf way "back in the day" (i.e., in the misty past of my 20s) when I did illumination and rubrication on calligraphy manuscripts, but I have only ever used it in tiny bits (on ornamental capitals and borders) and on paper; doing large areas on a board will, I think, be another challenge. I aspire to doing something more interesting than this flat circle—more along the lines of the awesome Stephanie Rew!




Anyway, here she is. I named her Saint Side-eye. Golden acrylics and metallic medium on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.





25 January 2024

Afternoon play

Wanted to make some art today but didn't have anything special in mind, so I went browsing through photos I have saved in my reference folder and found one of the admin on a Facebook page to which I belong (Lymphedema Warriors). I loved the goofy wide-eyed stare and the wispy hair (although I didn't really do the hair justice). I did a quick double-line ink drawing freehand and then added watercolor. Took me about an hour or so. The right eye is a little too small for the rest of the face, and a little close in to the nose, but hey, freehand, people!




"Bec F."—Uniball pen and watercolors on 140-lb. coldpress, 9x12 inches.

20 January 2024

New media

I am generally resistant to new media (and also old media!), preferring to hone my skills in my two preferred "genres," watercolor and acrylic. Even though I can do stuff with pencil, charcoal, markers, or what-have-you, I'm not a fan; I get impatient having to shade with a pencil using a tiny little point (or even the side of the lead) when I can do it in a few strokes with a paintbrush and enjoy the effect more. But after last week's Let's Face It assignment using pan pastels, I was persuaded by instructor Mika Denny's comment that likened using them with an applicator as closely akin to painting, and ordered some implements and a few colors to try.

The assignment called for a base of tinted paper, and I know I have some tan and maybe some gray Canson Mi-Teintes lying around somewhere, but it's at the bottom of an archaeological layer of art supplies, printer boxes, and books, and there is a slim chance of finding it without more work than I wanted to put in, so instead I started by coating a piece of watercolor paper with a thin transparent wash of Payne's Gray to serve as my base, and messed about on social media while letting it dry. Unfortunately, it dried so light that the white pan pastel didn't even show up against it, so I tried again using ultramarine. It kind of defeats the purpose of the black-white-gray dynamic that was intended, but I did feel like the blue went with my model's expression, so there's that.

The whites and lights showed up much better on the blue background, while still giving a subdued effect to this moody abstracted gaze that Christa Forrest was wearing while waiting for her taped demo to begin. Christa has been one of our instructors for multiple Let's Face It years, and I have actually painted her once before, but that was a bright, cheery watercolor using intense Daler Rowney inks, and I really wanted to try conveying a different mood this time with the pan pastels.

My finished product is not near as sophisticated, detailed, or precise as the one demonstrated by Mika. Although I ordered the pastels, the applicators, and the tips, I didn't get a blending stump, and the black and white charcoal pencils I used (because I already had them) are pretty soft and messy, so I couldn't get the fine details around the eyes that she achieved in her demo. There's also a weird thing going on with that shadow on the side of her face—I think I messed with it too much when I brought color into the face. But...now I can say that I gave the pan pastels a shot, and although it's probably not a medium I will use much, I can see the appeal, particularly the softness of blending you are able to achieve when using the applicators and sponge tips rather than just pencils.

Here's the finished product: Christa in pan pastels on a watercolor background, 12x9 inches on coldpress watercolor paper.