Personal challenges

As I have mentioned, I'm working away on several different art challenges right now. One of them is the "Ode to Women" challenge put on by Olga Furman Art. My friend Corinne is also participating; she did a fantastic slightly wonky portrait the other day to fulfill week #4's theme, "Women Singers," and asked everybody to guess who it was.

I loved the painting but couldn't guess. It turned out to be Diana Ross, but it was from this reference photo in which she had short, wet, straight hair, which threw me. I responded to Corinne and excused myself by saying "I'm used to seeing Diana Ross with BIG hair, like she is in this picture," and posted one that had hair more typical of Diana's wild style.

Corinne wrote back and said "What a FABULOUS photo—are you going to paint it? I will if you will!" but I was busy with my third version of Mary McLeod Bethune and the first day of the Sktchy 30 Faces/30 Days challenge, so I said "Maybe later." Well, Corinne went ahead and made her painting, and it was so phenomenal that I told her "the contest is OFF!" Who could compete with it? It's absolutely gorgeous.

I felt like kind of a chicken, however, so I found yet a third photo of Diana Ross, also with the big hair but from a different angle and with a different expression, and painted from that one today. I was brave enough to do that, but NOT brave enough to venture painting Diana's hand, which Corinne did all too well.

I did steal at least one technique from her painting, although it wasn't quite as effective for me, not having the practice to do it as well. But it did create a lovely color for the background and give the hair some extra color and texture.

Here is my version of Diana; I'm not going to post Corinne's and mine side by side, because A. I don't have permission, and B. I don't think our friends will want to say out loud whose they would choose! (hers) But I'm not unhappy with this—I worked hard on it, and I'm glad Corinne pushed me to do it.

"Diana Ross"—pencil, watercolors, Elegant Writer pen, Uniball.