Once more into the assignment...

I decided today to try another of these Nancy Drew Mystery book covers in acrylic. I felt a little more confident this time, and am also happier with my result, but I'm not sure that it will ever be my medium. I've just been painting in watercolor for too long and enjoying it too much, as opposed to the struggle with thick, plasticky, quick-drying goo!

I got the proportions off a little on this one, and decided not to put the "By Carolyn Keene" at the bottom, since it's a little more square in format. Also, I simply drew the title this time using a watercolor pencil, and then went over it with some water to "activate" the color, but the texture was so heavy down in the grass that the soft pencil wouldn't work, and I was too lazy to draw it out and paint it the old-fashioned (laborious) way.

Pencil, Golden acrylic paints, watercolor pencil, on Fluid 140-lb. hotpress (smooth) paper, approximately 7.75x9 inches.

Humility

Humility, thy name is acrylic! I haven't painted with acrylics in 35 years, and even then it was on great big canvases with vague landscapes or giant fruit that worked well with its painterly aspects. And I only did maybe six before switching forever to watercolor! But this week's assignment for Let's Face It 2021 was to reproduce the cover of a Nancy Drew mystery, and working that tiny in acrylic was an exercise in frustration.

I'm going to post it despite its many shortcomings because, simply, I want credit for perseverance! I won't get it for much else: She looks more like a raddled hag than a sweet young thing, and the angle on the hidden staircase is so extreme that no human could climb it (so much for perspective). But...I painted it without benefit of underdrawing, I just jumped in as the teacher instructed and painted first the big shapes, then the smaller, then the details and accents. It was hard. That shows. But it's good to try something new, and maybe eventually someone will want a LARGE painting in acrylic and I can learn to shine better in that medium.

Golden acrylics on 140-lb. Fluid hotpress watercolor paper, approximately 9x12 inches.

Writer worship

I am not a religious person, but that doesn't mean that I can't be spiritually moved. Poignant music, an evocative poem, a beautiful spring morning—sometimes they choke me up. And sometimes it's wonderful writing that resonates with something deep inside of me. Some of that writing has been authored by Ursula Kroeber Le Guin. People label her as a science fiction writer and therefore ghettoize her writing to some extent; but she was simply a powerful, brilliant, and deep author of books that sometimes feature strange gods, inhabitants of other planets, dragons, or the first peoples of California.

I chose today to continue my somewhat haphazard plan of painting authors, and I decided to do Ursula. I undertook this with trepidation that I didn't feel while painting someone like Joyce Carol Oates, whose work I respect but who does not evoke any deeper feeling for me. Ursula is one of my top five of all time, so I had to do her justice.

I don't often surprise or impress myself by feeling like I have done the best I could do when painting a portrait, but I can say with 98 percent sincerity that I'm really happy with this one and that I feel I have outdone myself. I contemplated putting a quote on it, but how could you choose just one from her oeuvre of brilliance? So Ursula's face speaks for itself, and the background gives a little hint about who she was and what she loved. 

Pencil, Uniball pen, Daler Rowney inks, watercolor, on Fluid 140-lb. cold-press watercolor paper, about 7.5x11 inches.

P.S. My favorites are: The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Earthsea books (six) and The Telling, but I also love almost everything else she has written, especially all the books in the Hainish Cycle.

Experiment

I have some leftover odd pieces of paper, and decided to do some small paintings to use them up. Today's is a literary experiment—I'm reading a mystery novel, and the author is good at describing characters; after reading one description today, I decided to see if I could take his words and turn them into a visual of the character. So, this is Richie: His background is that he dropped out of medical school due to a bad cocaine habit, and is now a computer hacker. The description said, "Richie was in his late twenties, skinny as a one-iron, jug-eared and hawk-beaked. He wore thick, rimless glasses and had a scraggly mustache that looked like a squashed caterpillar." (I made his mustache squashy and caterpillar-like, but then couldn't resist giving him some dastardly twirlers after the fact.)

Some aspects of this were a fail: I have to stop believing despite all evidence to the contrary that I can use ink or watercolor when it comes to stencils! That mess of turquoise shapes on the left was supposed to be a cluster of numbers, but the ink leaked and moved and it looks mostly random, though you can make out a few discernible outlines. The "hawk" nose is more of a schnozz, because I didn't give him a "hump" at the bridge like I should have. Also, I keep making these characters' bodies too small to fit their heads! But I was happy with Richie's face and general demeanor, so I'm keeping him!

This is a little one, only 5.5x6.75 inches, on hotpress using Daler Rowney inks and white gel pen. A short session today, but fun.

Circus guy

This guy doesn't look like he would be featured in a circus, but that's because the bottom half of him is missing. I started to draw him on a long, narrow piece of paper, and he was so tall that I couldn't fit him in, if I stuck with the proportions I started with, so I just cut off his bottom half and made him into a portrait. He's the tall man, or the thin man, or the tall thin man, at the circus, coming in at something like 7ft8in. I already downsized him a bit below his neck, trying to make him fit, but by the time I got down to the feet, I knew it wouldn't work.

The reference photo, again, was an old one, so I decided to do him in monotone. I did use two colors—Raw Sienna and Burnt Umber—but that's it, other than the black Uniball pen I used to draw him.

I got his frame a little crooked (probably because he leaned too hard against it while I was drawing him), with the result that a smidgen of it got cut off at the bottom. Oh, well...just an exercise.

"Tall Man"

Uniball and Daler Rowney ink, on Fluid hot-press 140-lb. watercolor paper, about 6.5x9inches.

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.