I signed up with Kara Bullock Studios to take a year-long class called "Let's Face It 2021," featuring a new lesson each week with a different artist, hopefully resulting in at least 52 portraits for the year in which I learn new techniques.
This is my offering for Week One, and it's not quite what it was supposed to be, because I ordered all the supplies for this lesson from Dick Blick and apparently didn't allow enough time for them to get here. Today is the last day of the week, so I finally decided to just do the lesson with the materials I have on hand, which leaves out a bunch of interesting techniques.
The lesson was to think about a story that made an impression on you, and paint an abstract portrait that brought it to mind. Mine is hardly abstract; but I did include some of the elements, so it's not a total loss. This is Mary, the protagonist of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden.
I used a stencil on this to get some of the garden details in the background, and this time I did it beforehand in white gesso, allowing it to reveal itself when I went over it with various transparent colors of ink. I think it's effective and will practice that a few more times to get it right. Less effective was the black "fence" across the bottom. I should have waited until last and made it a white picket fence instead—in black, it looks more like some weird railroad track or something.
The main things I was missing were charcoal and pastels. I did find a charcoal pencil, but it was a pretty hard lead, so it didn't smudge around the edges like it was supposed to. Maybe I can repeat this lesson next week when my materials finally arrive!
"Mary Contrary"—gesso, stencils, pencil, charcoal pencil, Daler Rowney inks, watercolor, on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 (including border).
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