Pretty girls

I'm a little worried, after four weeks of Let's Face It 2021, that all we're ever going to paint is pretty girls. That's been pretty much it, when it comes to reference photos: Jenny's Russian bun lady was based on an abstract, and also loaded with color and ornamentation, but Angela's was a sweet young girl and Natalie's, while colorful, was still focused on a pretty woman. Jerney's also started with a beautiful model in elaborate makeup, although the way she ultimately used the reference was quite different from the original.

I'm not complaining about the classes: I'm learning some new tools and techniques, and Jerney's lesson inspired me to do the portrait of Amanda Gorman with type behind her and a personal symbol included in the picture, with which I was quite pleased. But in its source materials it's a little monotonous—completely different from the six months of Deb Weiers's wonky people, in which we included people of all ages and genders (or no perceptible age or gender because they were too weird to tell!) and a few critters crept their way in as well. 

I feel like I should at least try to achieve each week's objective; but maybe the answer is to pick my own reference photo and do the techniques on that, instead of slavishly mimicking whatever the teacher does, just to stay entertained. Either that, or I have to find some time in between assignments to continue making the offbeat art I have come to enjoy and at which I feel I excel. Otherwise, I know myself well enough to know that I will become bored and quit.

Given that second objective, I went online today looking for offbeat people, and ended up at the circus. Ironically, after the sentiments expressed above, the circus performer I ended up picking is also a pretty girl; but I think I have wonkified her sufficiently to make that not the first thing on which the viewer focuses!

This is drawn with pen only (Uniball), then painted with Daler Rowney inks, and I used a Signo white gel pen for tiny accents and filled in the background with black gesso. It's on Fluid hot-press (smooth) 140-lb. watercolor paper, and it's about 7x10 inches.