Serendipity? or fate?

This week's lesson from PYHAS2022 is from artist Julie Lee. Julie and I have a special relationship of which neither of us was aware until recently (and she still isn't but she's about to be): I saw a black and white photo of her online (not labeled) and saved it in my Reference Photos folder as a possible portrait subject; then, in December of last year, I made a painting of her that I called "Substrate Woman" (not yet knowing who she was), because I had created a beautiful abstract background with leftover acrylics and wanted to try painting just the lights and darks of a figure over it, leaving the substrate showing through for the rest of the skin and hair.

I did so, but didn't feel like it was a total success, since the contrasts of the Titanium White and Payne's Grey were a little extreme against my combination of warm browns and yellows. Then I set it aside.

Today, after the absolutely masterful lesson from Julie (painting a self portrait), I wasn't yet ready to do my own, since I want to order a birch panel on which to paint it; so I went back and dragged out my portrait of Julie and, using some of the blending and color placement techniques I observed in her lesson, I got out some Naples Yellow, some Raw Sienna, some primary yellow and a cobalt blue, and a bit of Payne's Grey and did a more painterly layer over the previous portrait, still leaving some substrate showing but doing a better job of accentuating and blending.

Parts of it got a bit smudgy, since I had used a navy blue Stabilo pencil on the original, which smears when you hit it with anything wet. But I managed not to do too much damage there, or else covered it up, and I'm much happier with my result.

I will do my own, using all of Julie's methods and advice, once my birch board arrives. Can't wait! It's a really exciting lesson.

"Julie Lee 2"—pencil, acrylic paints, and Stabilo on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x11 inches.

Substitution failure

Our lesson this week in LFI2022 was to do a monoprint of a person in profile, and then draw their portrait over the top. Our teachers always encourage us to use whatever materials we have, if we don't buy the specific tools, but sometimes there's just no substitution. In this case, I don't have a printer hooked up to my computer at the moment, and can't access one right now, so couldn't create the monoprint. I foolishly decided to try to fake it.

With the monoprint, you take a computer printout of a mirror image of your intended drawing, you scribble all over it with pastels, or Conté crayons, or CarbOthello pencils, and then you wet your (smooth) watercolor paper and put your monoprint face down on that to transfer the smudgy vague outline and shadows of your image onto the page. The teacher did this three times in a row, just to get sufficient background.

Then, you look at your opposite image, and draw in details loosely over the top of your more vague background, and you get a lovely squiggly loose shaded portrait.

What I ended up doing was drawing the mirror image in pencil, then acting as if that were the print-out and putting on the transfer media. But...my transfer image ripped when it got wet (too much water? Conté pencils too hard?) so I could only get two layers, and they weren't dark enough. (I think pastels would have made this a whole different exercise...)

Also, the teacher used a profile of a guy with a big cloud of curly hair and a beard and mustache, which provided lots of room for "squiggles" in the final drawing, while I short-sightedly chose this girl with a crown of braids, which are quite defined.

After the transfer, I went back and put a drawing over the top. It's too tight and precise for it to satisfy the objective of this lesson, and doesn't have the beautiful graduated shadows and light that the monoprint should have given. It basically looks like a smudgy, not-very-good portrait drawn in Conté pencil and finger-smudged. (And the only smooth watercolor paper I had was toned tan.)

Oh, well. I will try this again at the end of the month when my printer is up and running. But thanks, Juna, for the lesson!

Pencil, Conté pencil, CarbOthello pencil, and Stabilo All on 184-lb. toned tan mixed media paper, 7.5x10.5 inches.

Painting people you know

Painting people you know is sometimes the most perilous undertaking! You can't look at them objectively; you see them through the filter of long relationship, and you may not be aware as you paint of adding in opinions, personality quirks, or other knowledge of them that you don't possess with an anonymous reference photo. You would think that long acquaintance would lend extra skill to capturing an exact likeness, but in fact (for me, at least) it sometimes has the opposite effect, because I can't remain objective.

All that is to say, I have painted portraits (sometimes many) of people I know, and have never been quite satisfied with capturing their look. Antithetically, sometimes striving so hard to capture their likeness can also suppress their personality, so that it turns out to be a pretty picture but with no individuality shining through.

I may just be musing about all of this as a pre-emptive disclaimer, since I am posting a picture of one of the people closest to me in life, and I'm hoping people don't shriek and say, That looks nothing like her! I don't think they will; but I do admit that I once again have failed to quite capture that charming but damn elusive nose!

Here is Kirsten, in a silly moment when her unruly hair has taken on a life of its own and sprouted out of its bun to occupy a larger atmosphere.

"Kirsten and Hair"—Pencil and watercolor on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 7 3/4 x 8 inches.