The Annes

Well, I did it: One more Anne. And I went ahead and did Anne Frank. I had this idea to do a written background to evoke her journals, cover it with transparent ink, and then paint a mostly opaque acrylic portrait over the top of part of that. It's combining all the best features from all the classes I have taken in the past year, and it may evolve into a new style for me—we'll see. I wanted to do at least one acrylic portrait to include with my submissions for this auction happening next Wednesday. I like the limited palette—it's just three colors and white, except for her lips.

She looks a little older here than in some of her photos—I modeled her face a little too much and gave her a more pronounced chin—but I think there is a likeness. And if no one else sees it, perhaps the writing in faux German will bring the point home! I like the way it is still peeking through on the light side of her face.

"Anne Frank"—pencil, acrylic inks, acrylic paints, and Stabilo All pencil, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches (including border).

Art for auction

About a month and a half ago, I signed up to participate in an online art auction. At the time I was turning out a painting a day, and didn't see any problem with coming up with five new pieces to sell! Then July and hot weather hit, and output fell off. I got a notice today that my bio and photo were due today and all my pieces—named, described, and priced—are due by Friday night. Eeek!

It's okay if I sell already finished work in the auction, as long as it isn't anything that I did as an assignment or "in the style of" another—it all has to be original work. But with the 70+ portraits I've painted over the past year and a half, finding five of my own shouldn't be any problem. Still, I wanted to create at least a couple new pieces; most of my portraits have been sitting unsold on Etsy (and Redbubble) and honestly, it's shaken my confidence a little that I haven't made any sales.

I did that painting with collage of Anne Boleyn the other day and was happy enough with it that I decided it would be one that I would sell; and that led me down the path of thinking of a theme, like how about people named Anne? Hm. The first to come to mind was Anne Frank, but I didn't know if anyone would want to buy a portrait of a girl with such a tragic end. Of course, Anne Boleyn, skinny neck, sharp sword...okay. But I kept thinking, and yesterday inspiration struck. I was finishing up my four portraits in acrylic for Emma's class, so I waited until today, and put in a hard afternoon's work. And I have to say, I've impressed myself a bit. I just hope someone else has the same sentimental attachment to this Anne that I do...

"Anne of Green Gables"—pencil, watercolor, ink, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, 14x12 inches.

#4 of four

Our goal with this one was to leave as much of the background exposed as possible, and to be minimal with the rest. I had some trouble with that, because part of Emma's was predicated on its being painted over the least busy and lightest of her four backgrounds, while mine had a lot of darkness through the middle and bottom. So the face is much more "worked" than was desirable. 

She didn't want us to do the long straight hair of the model, but my background coincidentally had almost the exact divisions and lines that followed the track of her hair, so I went ahead and did it. I'm happy with the bit of serendipity that made my background look almost landscape-like behind her head—a vaguely Russian Mona Lisa! (because of her fantastic long, almond-shaped eyes and cheekbones).

As with the last one, we considered what was left on our palette when making our final plans, and used that on our brayer to "back off" parts of the picture. I had the blue from the previous portrait, so I mixed it with some of the white and rolled it down her left side, and then filled in a white portion above her opposite shoulder with red to complete the illusion of a backing landscape.

I probably could have messed with this for another half hour (and no doubt made it worse), but I touched up the features one more time so they popped out of the softened part and called it a day. It's a little too pink and white, and I thought about introducing some raw sienna somewhere, but decided to stop while I'm ahead. I don't know if it strictly achieves what Emma was going for, but the tension I feel when I look at it assures me that I took a risk!

"Russian Mona"—charcoal, acrylic paints, and Stabilo All marking pencil on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, approx. 9x12 inches.

Portrait three of four

On this portrait, Emma encouraged us to use the reference photo minimally—just to create and locate features. I have a hard time not going for a likeness, so I think she is somewhat a facsimile of the model, but I tried not to invest.

I used my background with Deb Weiers to study the background and utilize what was already there, so I started this drawing with the lips, since there was a red, lip-shaped section in the lower right. I like how it offset the face so it's not just another front-and-centered portrait.

Again, our goal was to work fast, to work loose, to paint in blocks and not go back to finesse our strokes or blend. I do think I did better here, because I tried to focus on the beauty of the paint rather than the relation to the color on the real face.

We were to paint the hair some intense shade of blue, but I had so many pretty effects underneath that I was reluctant to cover it all up, and left a few bits of the raw sienna, red, and black showing through, along with some squiggly pencil marks.

The last stroke, after we painted another picture of a pretty girl, was to deconstruct it by rolling a brayer full of the blue paint across her face and then to go back in with white paint in the negative spaces to take out some of the outline. That was a challenge, but I do like the result. I didn't go as far as she did with the white because, again, I didn't want to cover the things I liked about my saved background, but I did lose some edges here and there.

And finally, we used the Stabilo marking pencil judiciously to bring back the intensity of her eyes and to give her face some definition, although not to slavishly outline absolutely everything again.

I'm pretty happy with this! It's nerve-wracking to create, but once it's done, you can really appreciate the technique!

"Blue Hair"—charcoal, acrylic paints, Stabilo All 8046, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x11 inches.