Rose's hand

As an artist friend pointed out, if you enslave yourself to copying photos, you will get the bad along with the good. That was certainly the case with this painting of "Rose"—I painted her hand exactly as it was, and it looked raw, unfinished, and amateurish next to the rest of the painting, even though I was faithful about copying it. As Phoebe said when I showed her the reference photo and asked for advice, "Well, I'll be! you did paint it exactly as it is. It's just not nice looking!"

I had the option of leaving it and justifying it to myself by saying "that's what was in the reference photo," or making it better—either by painting it out altogether (Phoebe's suggestion, and it was a good one) or by substituting another hand. I was tempted to just paint it out, but my stubborn streak took over, and I decided I wasn't going to be conquered by that hand. It was a "duh!" moment when Pat said, "Um, can't you find a photo of a hand that will work with this pose? I've heard of editing parts that just don't look right...." I don't know why this didn't occur to me, on my third or fourth try, but it didn't.

I went on Google Images and searched for "hand on chest" and "hand on heart" and found three or four, but nothing with the exact angle of the original, so I got a little creative and substituted something entirely different. I put my painting into Photoshop Elements, then pasted in three different arms/hands at 60 percent opacity so I could see through to angle and line them up with what was there, and then used the one that worked the best without extending past her chest.

I painted out the old hand, painted in the portion of chest revealed by moving the hand, and waited for it all to dry. Then I drew in the new hand and arm, and painted them as they appeared, being careful about angles and positioning.

Ninety minutes later, Toni popped up on my Facebook feed and said "You can take a picture of yourself in that pose. It may be easier than finding the perfect reference photo." Visualize me slapping myself in the forehead. It's probably just as well, though; I have my father's giant ham hands and it probably would have looked even more like it didn't belong to Rose.

I can't claim to be a hand pro yet—this one still feels less expert than the surrounding portrait, and doesn't quite feel planted against her chest—but it's exponentially better than what was there before (you can see the old one if you scroll down to my previous post).

Thanks, everybody, for the encouragement (and all the suggestions that should have been obvious but somehow were not!).

"Rose with Roses #2"—with replacement hand! Pencil, acrylics, and stencil on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.

Questionable decisions

This is today's painting—this is Rose. I named her that because she has such a sweet, romantic look to her (the reference photo is an old sepia-tone), and also because I decided before I painted her that she would have a floral background. I ordered some new stencils after the fun I had with the one I used on Janell last week, and one was a cluster of roses, which seemed perfect.

My original plan was to do the background in a darker green and the rose pattern in pink; but after considering that her complexion would be primarily pink and that her simple dress (which I liked and wanted to keep) was a neutral color, I took a risk and made the roses yellow. I liked the combination of the vibrant green and creamy yellow when I painted in the background, but since I painted Rose in the foreground I'm wondering if I made the wrong choice. The background to the photo was extremely dark, and I didn't want that because her hair would disappear into it; but I may have erred too far in the other direction. I wanted the effect of her emerging from a garden, but it's kind of a loud garden!

I thought about redoing the background but the disadvantage with using a stencil is that the texture is there, and hard to cover, even with a thick impasto of paint, and since the portrait itself is relatively smooth, I didn't want a rough-looking border around it. So I'm going to leave it for now and ponder whether it's worth risking the portrait to make the background something more congruent with the figure.

The other challenge with this one was that damn hand. I repainted it four times, and I'm still not happy with it. It is in the exact position as the one in the photo (I made sure, by opening the photo in Photoshop Elements and then overlaying a photo of my painting at 60 percent opacity so I could see both), and the vagueness of the hand is similar to that in the photo, but it looks unfinished and amateurish to me, in comparison to the rest of the portrait. If any of my artist friends have suggestions, I'm listening! But for now, I'm giving up and going with it.

"Rose and Roses"—pencil and acrylics on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.

New challenges

This week I decided that perhaps, rather than taking on new challenges as regards materials and methods, I would instead switch out the type of subject that I paint. I never realized, until I attempted it, how different it is from painting adults to paint children. I have only painted a few and, admittedly, not small children even yet, but rather those approaching adolescence. But even those have different proportions to adults and require a different kind of focus.

I found a reference photo online on one of those nostalgia pages that put up old quirky black-and-whites of random families; the rest of the family was posed sedately in a line in the driveway next to the family car, but the daughter of the house was out in front of the bumper, clutching her hands together and with her mouth dropped open in an expression of astonishment or dismay, it's hard to know.

I didn't quite capture the look on her face—this girl maybe looks more like she's singing a solo in choir!—but I had fun with it, and also, because it was B&W, I got to decide the approximate colors through which she should be interpreted. I chose to do a "ground included" look, in the manner of my heroine Florence Lee, by leaving the dress largely defined by the background color, in order to make her face stand out that much more.

"Astonishment"—pencil and acrylics on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.