Her style is quite painterly, which is to say, she lets the brushstrokes stand without too much blending, which is foreign to my usual technique, and in fact I didn't end up fulfilling the assignment in the way she taught it, but I did capture a lot of the underpainting techniques and I think those made mine a better painting, even if it wasn't quite the one it was supposed to be.
Cyndy provided a three-quarter view of herself as reference; some people painted her, while others did a self portrait, but I didn't want to do either one, so I distracted myself by scrolling through Facebook and came upon a video someone had posted of Dinah Shore and Pearl Bailey singing a duet. I was so taken with the personality and good will shining out of Pearl that I decided she would be my model.
For once in my life I remembered to take in-process photos as I went along, mostly because there were SO many steps that I wanted to remember them! So I will put them all here and try to describe what went on.
First step: Gesso a board sloppily (i.e., don't worry about total cover), then put scratchy marks in the gesso before it dries. Then put a coat of clear over that.
Second step: Draw your image on the board. I used charcoal because I didn't have the graphite crayon Cyndy used.
Third step: Spritz your charcoal with water and scrub in the darks and features.
Fourth step: Paint in various colors to start distinguishing lights and darks.
Fifth step: Paint over the whole thing with red. Just because.
Sixth step: Block in your darks and lights.
Seventh step: Add some turquoise to the background, for show-through later.
Eighth step: Paint over your background with white, allowing the other colors to shine through, and scratch in some marks and some writing while the white is still wet, so you get more texture.
Ninth step: Add some colors to the surface, just for fun. I added gold and turquoise.
And after that...I started actually working on the portrait itself and forgot to take any in-process photos! Which is too bad, because it might have helped me stay looser and more painterly like I was supposed to. Instead (although it's a lot more scrumbly than my usual), I did way too much blending and ended up with a smoother image than the assignment called for. But—I love the textured background, and it does really make Pearl pop! I did manage to leave the body and neck a little more spontaneous, and I like that red showing through.
I finished this at 7:00, ate dinner and watched some TV, and came back to scan the final portrait. I put the scan up on the screen next to the reference photo, did a double take (so to speak), and ended up spending another 90 minutes reshaping the nose and the face (too wide on the left, too narrow on the right) and completely repainting the ear. Sometimes you just can't see it until it's in digital form. If I had looked earlier at my in-process photos, I might have caught the problems before the end, but...I didn't. After the second scan I could still see some tweakable bits, but decided to let it go. It's close.
I'm calling this after a quote (whose words I scratched into the background layers): "The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love." Judging by her effervescent personality, I imagine she knew what she was talking about.
"Pearl, Joy and Woe"—Charcoal and acrylics on thin birch board, 12x12 inches.
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