Companion piece

Last week I painted Lynn Como's great-grandchild, Nerai. The reference photo included both her great-grandchildren, Nerai (two) and Evelyn (four) in it, but I wanted to paint large, and the biggest board I had was a 12x16, so I decided to just paint the little one. But after I finished it, I got to thinking that it would be fun to do a companion piece with Evelyn in it, reversing the colors (background and foreground) so they would go together but not be matchy-matchy. So yesterday I painted my board the light ultramarine color I used for Nerai's clothing, then did my pencil drawing, and today I painted Evelyn, changing her hat from the shocking pink in the photo to the peachy-pink color I used for the first painting's background, also drawing that color into the flower print of her dress, and using the same stencil for snow in the background to further unite them.

I was happier with the likeness I caught for Nerai than today's for Evelyn—try as I might, I couldn't quite get the eyes right, and hers are prettier—but over all, I was pretty happy with it. I think they would be fun to hang side by side in a floating frame.

"Snow Evelyn"—pencil, acrylics, and stencil on 12x12 thin birch board.

LFI 2024, Day One!

Starting a new year of portraits, with Kara Bullock Art School and the class Let's Face It 2024. This is year #3 for me with this class, and although I was MIA for about two-thirds of it this past year, it's still worth it to get 50 lessons for the year and be able to go back to them whenever I want.

Today's lesson was with Kara herself. I love the loose, painterly quality of her work, but have never been able to loosen up my hand and eye to quite that degree. But I'm going to call today's painting a win anyway, for several reasons. First of all, I did an underpainting and then did my sketch using a large paintbrush, instead of drawing out every last detail with a pencil, which is huge for me. And then I continued using one brush for almost the entire painting, although it wasn't quite as large as the one Kara used. My painting is much more blended than hers, and although I used most of her palette, I introduced a few colors to which I am partial (like Cobalt Violet and Titan Mars), and switched out her black for Payne's Gray, because I don't like the harshness of black. I also confess that I broke out a smaller brush to clean up a few edges, but not much!

Here's my sketch and underpainting in burnt umber fluid acrylic:

The model photo didn't have a name attached, so I'm going to call her "Tanya"—acrylics on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.