Mixed Media Massacre

This was a lesson in paying attention. And you would think, after last week, when I used gold ink instead of white to do the highlights on my waterlogged girl, that I would have been more careful, but no.

This was Week Two on PYHAS (Paint Your Heart and Soul) 2022, conducted by the talented and eclectic Joan Martin, and it was an exercise in ultimate use of mixed media. First we were to sketch and shade the portrait with soft pencil on a tan board background; then we were to roll on a thin layer of white paint (acrylic or gesso) with a soft foam rubber roller, paying attention to putting the paint where the highlights of the picture naturally fell; then we were to go back in with a black oil-based colored pencil to redefine our drawing; after that was tinting with colored ink; then we were supposed to intensify certain areas by going over them with various shades of gray marker; and finally, we were to do highlights with our white gel pens. Oh, and if you felt like it, you could also put in white marks with the edge of a credit card, but that one was optional!

Here is a portrait of Mimi, Joan's finished product. Cool, huh?

So, to continue being my contrary self, I decided that rather than painting Mimi, who Joan chose because she has a wealth of life in her face with which to play around, I would do a portrait of my friend Phoebe. It was the white hair that inspired me; Phoebe has a shock of stand-up white and gray/black hair that's fun to paint.

I did the pencil sketch and it was fine; I'm not much of a sketcher, infinitely preferring contour drawing, but I can do it when I have to. My shading isn't up to snuff, but since it was going to be subsumed in a bunch of other media, I went for it and did what I had to do.

I didn't have any tan board, so I used my gray mixed media paper, which holds up well against almost anything. It didn't bother me that it wasn't tan, although it did make it harder to then achieve skin tones over the top. Oh, well.

I moved to the next step, which was to roll thin white paint onto the drawing using a soft foam roller. Hmm. I don't have a soft foam roller. But I do have a hard rubber roller, which I use for all my abstract backgrounds that I do for my acrylic paintings, I'll just use that! That'll work!

Right. Not the greatest idea. I basically obliterated two-thirds of the drawing and made a big mess, including getting splatters of white paint in the clear space out beyond the face. No worries, I thought, I'll just paint that all in with the white, and then I'll salvage the face with my black colored pencil by over-drawing and shading everything I did before. After all, I can still see the basic outlines, and can refer back to the photo to recreate it.

This is where the crucial not-paying-attention moment (see "gold highlights" above) reared its ugly head. As if I hadn't given myself enough of a challenge with the badly rolled paint, I reached out for a black colored pencil and instead picked up a Stabilo All. People who know what that pencil does are immediately groaning in sympathy. See, it makes a nice solid black line; but when you put water on whatever you drew with it, whatever the pencil is made of (does anyone know? I don't!) is activated and turns dark, dark, dark, and also spreads like a mofo.

So, when I moved on to the next step, which was to "colorize" the portrait with my acrylic inks, I got a rude awakening when everything—line work and shading—started turning BLACK. I don't have a photo of that step, because I was desperately trying to keep it from going south.

I almost tossed it at that point but then I decided, You have just created more of a challenge for yourself, don't be a wuss. So I went ahead and activated the Stabilo everywhere, giving myself a lot darker outlines and darks than I had planned, but it mostly worked. I blotted a LOT.

I let that dry thoroughly because in theory Stabilo only activates once, it doesn't keep on going (lies, all lies), and then I went back in with my acrylic inks, in shades of Flesh, Red Earth, and (of course because it is Phoebe) Opera Pink. Some of the color got muddy from the Stabilo, and some of the Stabilo lifted too much because of the color; again, I blotted, I pushed the colors around, I thinned things out.

I didn't really need to use the gray markers to intensify, which was good because I didn't have any; but I did use a couple of Conté crayons in Sanguine and White to feather and soften some areas over the top of the Stabilo mess.

Finally, I went back in with my white Signo gel pen and fiddled with the highlights until I got them the way I wanted them.

So here is an extremely effortful version of my friend Phoebe, styling courtesy of Joan Martin. It's kinda cool; but I could have painted a "normal" painting in half the time with probable better results!