Success!

I felt badly, here and there during the month, at not following through with the Sktchy 30 Faces/30 Days challenge, but I just went back and counted, and even though I either painted faces for other challenges or simply went my own way to paint someone who interested me, I managed to paint 31 portraits during the month of March! That's a record for me, so I'm sharing it here.

If you are curious, you can roll back through about six pages here on the blog, where I have shared them all.

Thanks for being my followers! I hope you have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy my process. If you ever have the desire to acquire a constant reminder, please visit my Etsy store, at https://www.etsy.com/shop/MElliottMixedMedia, or pick up a print, a greeting card, a coffee mug, or a tote bag at my Redbubble page, https://www.redbubble.com/people/meligelliott/shop. And even if you don't intend to buy, I'd love it if you would go to Etsy and like/follow my page, just to make me look good! It's sad when you only have three followers...

Quite contrary

So, this week's assignment was to paint this gal, using basically red, black, and white in various combinations to get the darkest to the lightest colors. Cool photo, yes? Cool color palette too, hm? So, did I do it? No, of course not, because I'm contrary and I don't want to do what everybody else is doing, even if I could learn something from it (which I definitely could have).

Kara Bullock, the week's teacher and portrait painter, did hers in acrylic, which of course makes sense because you can get solid opaque colors, you can blend all sorts of shades, you can do the darks first and then the lights instead of vice versa like in watercolor, and if you make a mistake, you can paint over it.

My friend Phoebe, who is also a bit contrary, did do the assignment—but she did it in watercolor, and added black and white charcoal and Stabilo Woody to achieve the darkest darks and lightest lights and, I will add, did it masterfully. So I thought, Okay, watercolor, good.

Then I saw a different reference photo, and instead of the pink/red, the predominant color was green. I liked the model's face and pose, and thought the green in the skin and hair would be a fun challenge. Ha! Big difference between painting a big mass of dense curly hair and some that is thin and straight and is letting through a lot of light. And let the cascade of mistakes begin!

First of all, I should have followed Phoebe's example and not pre-coated my paper with brown strokes of paint the way Kara did. Phoebe left her face a pristine white as a base, and it made a huge difference.

Second, I shouldn't have mixed inks and watercolors, because the inks sit where they are put, while the watercolors keep moving when you go over them.

And finally, I should have stopped while I was ahead. Either that, or started over! Because this portrait, from the background to the smallest detail, is kind of a hot mess. But...I did a portrait, start to finish, today, which pleases me if nothing else does. Here she is:

"Green Girl"—pencil, Daler Rowney inks, Paul Jackson watercolors, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x11 inches.

I have until next Monday to actually do the assignment...maybe that will happen now.

Van Gogh Fairy?

If you know me, you know that I am stubborn. Also, I don't like to fail. That sad aquamarine fairy from the other day made me cringe, and then today I saw the instructor's rendition, which was really nice! So when I saw a reference photo that made me look twice, I decided that she would be my Van Gogh fairy, AND that I would do the painting in watercolor just to prove that I could, even if that's not optimum for getting Vincentish results. So I did.

I didn't quite get the hang of the directional thing in the background at first, so it's kind of distracting, but I mostly pulled it off on the figure herself. I laid down a base of turquoise/lime mixed ink, let that dry, then drew her in pencil and started making dots and strokes. It took a long, long time! Even though I love Van Gogh's art so much, I can't imagine choosing to paint that way.

And yes, Phoebe, I went there.

"Van Gogh Fairy"—Daler Rowney inks, pencil, Paul Jaackson watercolors, Uniball pen, gold metallic watercolor, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Experimental fail

Jenny Manno, one of the artists I follow on Facebook, has had a monthly challenge this year to paint a fairy, using a particular color and doing it in the style of a particular artist. This month's is the Aquamarine Fairy, and she is supposed to be in the style of Vincent Van Gogh.

Now, first of all, the idea of Vincent painting fairies is pretty far-fetched; the people in his paintings are mostly salt-of-the-earth farming people—women with pink muscled arms picking fruit in orchards, old guys with beards and postman hats. But beyond the subject matter, there is the question of the medium: Vincent painted in oils. He rendered everything in tiny strokes of color set side by side to create a particular texture.

I'm able to go with the fairy as subject matter, but I didn't want to desert my chosen medium of watercolor (or ink). I knew, however, that a Vincent look-alike wouldn't be something easily pulled off using a paint whose main characteristic is that it runs and blends into everything else instead of remaining distinct.

So I decided on an experiment: I thought that if I textured the paper first with gesso, using tiny strokes all over, then after that dried and I applied my watercolor, the undercoat would give the painting that distinctive texture. The problem with that, I remembered halfway through this experiment, is that water media tends to bead up over the top of gesso. Using it in small quantities for things like the whites of eyes is one thing, but painting over the top of it when it's a solid layer means that you have little to no control of your medium, if its main ingredient is water.

I managed to paint the fairy, but she looks nothing like Van Gogh-style, and she also doesn't have much finesse. I was so focused on the colors and technique that she came out rather vapid! Fairies should be ethereal or evil, rather than looking like a bored teenager staring at a screen.

I pulled her together a bit by using a black line around everything, but subtleties of coloring were impossible to achieve when half the paint wouldn't stick to the page. And because the gesso coverage wasn't complete, there's also the problem of leprosy-like spots on her arms wherever ink hit paper....

We have until March 31st to achieve this challenge; maybe I will try another fairy, without the gesso, and maybe I will give in and do it in gouache or acrylic. Maybe.

"Sad Aqua Fairy"—gesso, ink, watercolor, pen, on 140-lb. watercolor paper, 9x11 inches.

Picturing my reading

I reread Crosstalk, by Connie Willis (one of my favorite sci-fi writers), this week, just for some comic relief in between literary and dystopian fare. For more of the story on Briddey (this woman in the picture), you can read my book review blog post at https://bookadept.com/2021/03/28/lucky-charms/. 

This is mostly Daler-Rowney inks, although I went back to my watercolors for her exceedingly fair Irish complexion and the emerald color of her dress. This is painted on Fluid 12x16-inch 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, so that I had room to expand the height if I needed to, which I did. The collage of HMS Pinafore at the bottom took up more space than I had anticipated, so I had to move her up on the page, but I scanned it in two pieces and merged them in Photoshop so I could put in the whole painting. It's a pain, because the colors never match perfectly at the edges, but you can usually tweak them so they are virtually undetectable.

I also taped around it so that there's a framing border, although I don't know if it will ever get framed and hung, since it's an illustration for a particular book. Perhaps I will see if I can find an address and send it to Connie Willis.

"Briddey Builds Her Perimeter"