Shifting goals

I started this painting today with one objective: Paint a good picture of someone reading a book. I looked through my files and happened upon another painting someone had done of a woman reading, but she was on a sofa covered with fluffy linens and situated outdoors under trees. So I decided I would use her basic form and attitude, but would locate my painting indoors.

The thing I learned in the past two days of ending up with girls with big heads and small bodies is, you can't do a figure painting in the same way you do a portrait. With a portrait, I always start with the eyes, and work my way out to the rest of the face and then the head. I don't worry too much what size it's going to turn out to be—either there will end up being border or there won't. Maybe her hair will go off the page. Maybe there will be clothing, and maybe only a bit of neck will fit. But I can gauge it now so that there's most of a head and some shoulders on a 9x12-inch piece of paper.

Both yesterday and the day before, I started with the face and head, and then drew the bodies, with the unsatisfactory results we see. The one I did for my homework wasn't so bad, because she still fit in the scene and I could pass her off as a child instead of a young woman; but the other reader-girl was just a big mess from start to finish. So today, I sketched out the scene in its entirety (i.e., woman and sofa), and then went back and figured out how to put in the features on the face.

After I had done the sketch, I thought about the entire piece. In the original, there are tree leaves, draperies, and a lot of sun dappling for interest, but mine was looking kind of bare, with just a sofa and a blank wall. At that point, my objective shifted for the first time, as I thought about my homework from Maria Pace-Wynter and decided to manufacture a background. I liked the effect of the gold the other day, so I added a wall with striped wallpaper, only with the stripes vertical this time, and instead of a picture, I made a window (and added in some of the leaves from the original painting). That was better, but I still had a large amount of sofa showing, plus a fair allowance of flooring, and they might be overwhelming (or underwhelming) if painted two flat colors. I harked back again to my homework, and decided that pattern was my friend.

After putting in the floorboards, I considered painting a floral design on the sofa, but decided I didn't have the patience. I then lit on the bright idea of using one of my new stencils for some pattern, so I laid it down with a pencil...and hated it. I erased it, but...on coldpress watercolor paper, it is quite difficult, even with a fairly soft pencil such as I was using, to really erase something completely, and after I put a coat of pale yellow on the sofa, the pencil lines still showed through. I had to cover them with something, and it had to be a pretty fine pattern, so I jumped back in time to 1987 and brought forward my corduroy couch. (It was rust-colored, but otherwise looked quite a lot like this.) To give the picture more interest, I draped a plush afghan at one end.

And then, I finally got to the girl. (I really didn't intend to spend all day on this!) I picked colors that would pop against the yellow/green background of the room, and carefully delineated all her features, her shadows, and her big full skirt with all the folds. I was ready to leave the picture there; it looked pretty good...but seemed a little pallid. I didn't want to do my trick of outlining everything with my Uniball, because I liked the background the way it was. So once again I returned to Maria Pace-Wynter's tutorial and gave my girl more white highlights and a round pink circle on her cheek. It was better, but still not right. So, taking out a fine brush and my Payne's Grey ink,  I outlined only the figure and her book, leaving everything else as is.

Suddenly, the whole point of the picture—a woman, reading a book—popped off the page. Maria's methods now made sense to me, and I was so grateful that I jumped in and did that lesson exactly as it was the other day, so that it gave me both the ideas and the agency to pull this off today. I'm very happy with my reader on her corduroy couch, propped on an elbow and whiling the day away. That's what I used to do before I took up painting!

"Sofa Reader"—Pencil, Daler Rowney inks, Paul Jackson watercolors, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 (including 3/4-inch border).