Art trades

Putting together a gallery of awesome artwork is easier when you have art to trade—and people who want to trade with you, of course! I have mentioned before that I have some treasured pieces by artists I met in Deb Weiers's class, and now I am actively seeking out more and making art specifically to barter.

Since many others work smaller than I do, I decided to do some that are half the usual size, which takes me less time but is still quite satisfying in terms of being creative. This lets me get a few other things done during my day instead of spending the bulk of it on a painting, which is good right now, believe me.

This girl is "Awesome," which was the best encomium I could find in print today to paste on her nose. She will soon have a home with another artist, and one of her pieces will reside with me!

"Awesome"—pencil, Uniball pen, Daler Rowney inks, gold and white gel pens, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 6x9 inches.

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).

Knowing when to quit

Every once in a while I manage to do two paintings in a day. And every once in a while it works out well; but most of the time, not. I've been sitting too long, staring too long, futzing too much to make both of them good. Occasionally it's the first one that's bad and the second one in which I get in the groove, but usually the second one is the one that suffers.

I decided to paint this girl sitting in a chair reading, inspired by the girl in a chair from this morning. Everything went wrong from the beginning, when I made her nose too long. Nose too long = face too big = head too big, and then I do the hands and body at the "right" size and she ends up looking...strange. Also, I could not get the eyes to track in this. I don't know if I shaped them wrong, put them at conflicting angles, or what, but no matter what I do she looks slightly cross-eyed. The only things I was happy with were the hair and that one hand.

Sometimes you just have to say, Okay, fail. And try again tomorrow.

"Pony-tail Reader"—pencil, watercolor, Uniball pen. Started out 9x12, got cropped to about 9x10 inches?

LFI2021 Assignment

The monthly challenges are over, but the weekly class continues. This is Week 14 with Maria Pace-Wynter, and the painting is of her daughter, Imogen.

She did this painting mostly in acrylic gouache on a birch board at 12x16 inches, but I did it almost exclusively in Daler-Rowney inks on paper. So some of my contrasts aren't as great (especially when using white transparent ink instead of white opaque paint), and the ink is more blendy than are the paints.

Also, poor Imogen's head is a little large here, compared to both her body and the wicker chair, which feel truncated, with the result that she looks about a decade younger than she actually is. But, over all this was fun—I got a kick out of her "sad clown" faces—and I enjoyed the novelty of painting an entire scene with a full figure instead of just a head! I need to do more of that. Mischief managed.

"Imogen"—pencil, Daler Rowney inks, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Random acts of portraiture

Whenever I start feeling too uptight in my techniques, or bored with painting the next pretty face (no matter how appealing), I remember that I can go back to Deb Weiers's blind contour weird-wonky people for a refreshing break.

Today I combined some bright spring Eostre-ly colors with a lady who is having all the feels, most of them not so cheery as her color scheme, but oh, she was a fun one to draw. I've been paying attention more on Facebook when somebody posts a photo or a meme that would work for a rando Weier(d) and collecting them in my References folder. I won't, however, share the originals, because A. not supposed to steal others' images, and B. the person would probably not be recognizable anyway, which is the whole point, so why bother?

"All the Feels"—pencil, Daler-Rowney inks, Uniball pen, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.