Futzing around

I haven't had any creative epiphanies lately—in fact, I've been struggling to come up with ideas of things I want to paint. So I went looking today at other people's art to see if something struck a nerve. I saw one I really liked, which was in acrylic and loosely painted, with a woman in a hat that covered part of her face but then faded into the background at the top of her head.

I found a bunch of different women in hats and thought I'd try it, but then I ended up instead with inks. I tried to prep an interesting background—I found a woman I wanted to do in all browns, but my browns are too close in tone and tint to make something interesting in contrast all by themselves, plus I messed with it too much and ended up covering too much of the white paper (leaving white patches makes for some great interest in a portrait). So I painted this woman fairly straight, although I gave her a double squiggly line and also let some of the paint run and move on its own to keep things looser.

After putting the ink border around, I decided to gesso on the outside of it and try for some kind of neat texture but I couldn't settle on anything that looked good—I kept trying things and wiping them off (the benefits of gesso). I finally covered it with gold paint, which came out looking sort of like a gilded wooden frame, which is kinda cool, though nowhere near as cool as I wanted it to be!

BTW, that brown splotch in the background was apparently a flaw in the paper that caused it to absorb too much right in that area. That almost never happens with Fluid paper; glad it was already a splotchy painting, because if that happened in the background of something pristine, whoa!

I'll try the impressionist hat trick sometime later.

"Brown Study"—Daler Rowney inks, Uniball pen, gel pen, gesso, metallic watercolor, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches. 

LFI2021, Week 21

This week's instructor was Kasey Moran, whose specialty is painting abstract figures in acrylic. Here is the example she painted for us, from a woman standing in front of a waterfall, which I quite liked:

It captures the feel of the water, and fills in enough of the features using just shadow that you get a real feel for the character. I like how she carried the blue of the water into the shadows and creases on the dress, and pulled some orange into the green of the surrounding background—it really unifies the piece.

I haven't painted much in acrylic, OR tried much (any?) abstract, and it's hard not to fill in more and more detail. But I gave it a shot, using a photo I found of a very grimy little girl in a plaid dress and hair bow, standing out in a field in the aisle between rows of some kind of crop.

It would definitely have been better had I been working on a larger canvas, instead of a 9x12-inch piece of paper. It was hard to get just enough detail without going over the top. I'm pretty pleased with the plaid dress with its pattern and its shadows, but less pleased with the surrounding vegetation, which didn't come out showing its proper shapes. I think the colors work, however.

I also struggled with the acrylic. Not so much with the painting part, though that was challenging (especially this small), but with the part where I swish a brush around in water a few times and expect it to be clean, as it would be if it were watercolor. That's the reason for the smears of yellow-green in the clouds and sky—I couldn't get the damn brush completely clean and kept tainting the paint when I picked it up. I'm sure there's a trick to this, but I will have to ask someone who uses acrylics regularly.

It was a fun exercise, and made me want to buy a big gessoed board or even a  canvas and try a "real" painting sometime soon.

"Field Girl"—Golden acrylics on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Bleeding is good

This was after observing an exercise by Jenny Manno using the Elegant Writer to do all the nuances of shadow on a face. She was drawn in pencil; then, gradually, feature by feature, outlined with an Elegant Writer calligraphy pen, which bleeds on contact with water. So after each application of the marker, you take your wet paintbrush and pull the color out of the line to make shadow. The beauty of this particular water-soluble marker is that when it bleeds, it spreads out into multiple subtle colors of turquoise, pink, and purple, even though the pen itself is black. The dappley effect on the dress and in the background (and accidentally in part of her hair!) is the result of salting the wet paper; the salt soaks up some of the color, and, after it dries and you brush the salt off the surface, it leaves little blooms in the color. It works a lot better if you have coarse or rock salt, but all I had was regular sea salt, so it's not quite as spectacular. (Also, I covered some of it up with another application of ink.)

This is taken from a photo of a young Frida Kahlo—she was just 18 when this was taken, and betrayed no hint of her later, more flamboyant look. Her hair is drawn back severely, and her dress is a plain dark satin, almost like a postulant's from a nunnery. I don't feel like I captured the likeness too well, and this was one of those times that, despite duplicating the photo as closely as I could, I couldn't get her to look at me. In the photo it's her usual direct gaze, but in my painting she's focused on something out in the distance. So frustrating.

This wasn't the ideal picture on which to play with the Elegant Writer, because the best use of it is to make crazy cloudy colorful hair; but I'm happy enough with the subtle shading in the face that reflects all the colors it makes. I'm less happy with some of the awkward lines in the hair, dress, and border, but playing is how you learn to do better.

"Young Frida"—pencil, Elegant Writer (black), Stabilo All pencil, Daler Rowney ink (whites of the eyes, tints, and background colors), and table salt, on Strathmore Toned Gray 184-lb. Mixed Media paper, 9x12 inches.