Layers

Two months later, and I finally convinced myself to make some art. I don't know what happened—a combination of that dratted heat wave with the beginning of my UCLA Readers' Advisory class on the first of October that necessitated a lot of preparation, before and during, to bring it all up to date after a two-year hiatus and some previously undiscovered research on next-level RA just took me out of the painting mindset, and even though I have had time here and there, I just kept playing Words with Friends and binge-watching series on Netflix.

At first I didn't think I would care to assay this week's lesson; although I greatly admire Maria Pace-Wynters's highly colored and beautifully intricate works, I know myself well enough to know I don't have the patience for all of that eensy-weensy detail. But I was itching to try a few of her techniques, and my friend Phoebe, who did the lesson in a greatly simplified but still gorgeous manner, made me decide to get over myself and give it a shot.

Maria's first layer is collage, and although I didn't have the beautiful scraps of paper she has saved up over decades for this purpose, I did have some fun patterned tissue papers lying around, so I did my best with those, applying them to my birch board with acrylic medium. Then I added some glossy acrylic spray in turquoise and orange, and let the first step dry overnight.

The next step was to draw my image, which I took (with her permission) from @DUHHCID (Jenell Del Cid)'s Instagram page. I thought that I had recently "discovered" her, and asked her permission to paint her, but later found an old Sktchy portrait of her from about 2.5 years ago that I painted for the 30-day challenge (it's so bad I won't even show it here!), so that was funny. Anyway, Maria used a profile reference and incorporated flowers, so I settled on a profile photo of Jenell contemplating a tiger lily, and got to work.

Yesterday I did the pencil sketch and then got caught up in other "life" stuff and didn't get back to it, but this morning I was determined to make some progress, so after medicating Gidget (and parenthetically, why would anyone think it was a good idea to make antibiotic drops for cats look and smell like Bazooka bubble gum?) and eating some oatmeal, I squeezed out a bunch of colors onto my palette and got to work about 10 a.m.

Following Maria's example, I started with her characteristic stark white face and worked outward from there. I usually go for more realistic tones, but I do love the contrast of the white-white skin with the red cheeks and Phthalo Turquoise shadows—rather Renoir-esque. I stopped at this point to take a photo, because I realized I hadn't documented the drawing stage. After that, I got so caught up in the painting that I forgot completely about my camera until I was nearly done, and decided to let it go until I could scan the finished piece.

After doing the face, I followed her example by painting in most of the background so as to get definition around my image, and this is where I ran into trouble. Those pesky pieces of tissue didn't stick to my board with the application of acrylic medium the way Maria's did to her work; I'm wondering if she had a base coat of something underneath, because they just did not want to adhere to the raw board, and kept peeling up. I looked in vain for my bottle of Elmer's to glue it down, so I ended up lifting off and discarding a couple of significant-sized pieces, including all but two of the big gold dots that I thought would look cool shimmering through; but I managed to get the confetti tissue to stick pretty well, so that at least stayed. I like how it comes up out of the top of her head and also surrounds the tiger lily, as if the lily provoked thoughts that are flying out of both of them at once.

I was much happier with the image of Jenell than I was with the tiger lily; I'm not particularly adept at painting flowers. But after doing a rather flat rendering, I was inspired by Maria's exhortation to spread all the colors all around the painting to promote unity, so I picked up some of the Phthalo Turquoise on my brush and used it for the darkest shadows on the lily stem and leaves, which greatly enhanced the contrasts, and then threw some into her hair as well, and darkened the shadows of the blouse.

One of the last things I did was to use a stencil with a nearly dry brush of white paint to create the lace ruffle collar and jabot. It wasn't exactly as I envisioned it, but I like how it turned out, and that the flowers reflect the approximate shape of an open lily, to echo the main feature.

I thought about doing some outlining with white (or black) as Maria does, but ultimately decided to leave this soft and diffuse and not get fussy, since it's not my talent. 

I got so caught up painting that I worked straight through the lunch hour and finished up about 4:00, then picked at tiny details, scanned, and posted. I really enjoyed this lesson! Maybe I won't wait so long between this and the next.

"Jenell with Lily"—pencil, collage, and acrylic on 1/8th-inch birch board, 12x16 inches.