Let's Face It 2021

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).

The Gardener

 I had a whole picture in my head of how this one was going to go, and I messed up almost every element.

I bought some stencils because I really like how some people have been using them in the backgrounds of their paintings. What I didn't properly take in was that they were painting with acrylics. So when I tried out my stencils with watercolor, instead of nice crisp lines I got bleed and smudges.

I should have stopped at that point and started over, but I figured oh, well, it's background, it will be fine. But after I did the rest of the drawing and painting and then went in with black line everywhere, the so-called background looked weird because it was equally as intense in color as the foreground, but didn't have the black line. So I ended up putting kind of a scribbly line around/over everything, in the hopes of pulling it together.

So, it's a hot mess. But I still like certain elements, so I'm going to share. In accordance with the messiness of the art, I used a "messy" quote about gardening, instead of something profound from Gertrude Jekyll or somebody. And it's true—gardening IS good therapy, and you DO get tomatoes. And zucchini, and peas...

I wonder if my "model" will recognize herself from this. The reference photo was gleaned from her Facebook page, and it was a difficult angle to capture. She suffers a little from Pinocchio nose...

Stencils, watercolors, Daler Rowney inks, pencil, Uniball Vision pen, on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12.

Dapper Don

 Inspiration often arrives for me with a picture on the Internet, whether it's through social media or just a random perusal of images. Most often the subsequent work is a mash-up of two or three photos, or the translation into some concept that I want to illustrate. The production of a straight portrait has become less interesting to me than the transformation of ordinary into, well, at least more interesting, if not transformative.

Some of you may recognize this elegant gentleman as Ryan McDonald, husband (and hopefully good sport) of my friend Mika, while others may just think, Oh, it's a youthful Don Quixote with tinted sunglasses—that's an interesting anomaly. Either way, here he is, my latest conceptual portrait, "Dapper Don." Thanks to the model, particularly since I didn't ask permission first! 

Daler Rowney acrylic inks, pencil, white gesso, black Uniball Vision pen, Signo white gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 8x10 with a one-inch border.