A new style(?)

Well, apparently I can paint this way, if I try, even without mimicking Milind Mulick step by step. I followed the process he shared yesterday, making my pencil sketch rough, using geometric shapes and then targeting the specifics of the features afterwards, and after a few false starts as to placement, I got everything pretty close to where it was supposed to go. The angle of the face and the head tilt aren't quite right compared to the photo—her face is shorter and a little wider at the cheekbones—but I think Elena Mahoney Sánchez would recognize this as her likeness.

I put in the cools and the warms palely with a big soft wet brush, and while that dried I roughed in the hair and the sweater. Back to the face, and I just built up, looking closely at the reference photo for all the colors, and when that was dry I went back to detail all the darks and finesse everything else one more time. I started work on the drawing at 11:00, and finished the painting at 1:30.

I mention her name because this is one of the teachers at Sktchy for the "30 Faces in 30 Days" class. I liked her painting demo, but I found her face more interesting than the reference she selected for us, so I did her instead.

So...NOW what do I do? Keep painting like this? I like it—I have always wanted to be a more "painterly" artist—but I also love my bright acrylic inks and the double black line I use to delineate features in what is increasingly becoming my signature style. I worry if I keep going with this, I will lose the facility for that. After all, I never learned this from that, I had to learn it from mimicking someone else...

So here we are, derailed by Attention Deficit Disorder again....

"Elena"—pencil and Paul Jackson watercolors on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, approx. 9x12 inches.