Another mug shot

I wasn't going to paint today, but I couldn't resist this guy's baby face and black eye, so here he is. Same process as the previous two days. I like his pouty mouth and wacky hair.

"Baby Face"—pencil, Uniball pen, Daler Rowney inks, gesso, watercolor, on 9x12 coldpress Fabriano watercolor paper.

More criminals

This one didn't come labeled with a name, but she'd been arrested by the Cincinnati police, so I decided to call her Cindy. So, "CinCin" for short, hee hee.

More Deb Weiers method: Pencil squiggles, Daler Rowney ink-wash, Uniball pen drawing, and then "decor" made with Posca pens, gesso, watercolors, and India ink. I didn't see anything I wanted to collage on here, so I got funky with her hair instead, just for a point of interest, and gave her a stripey shirt too. I was planning on a black background like the other one, but I didn't want to cover up all the pretty colors, so...no black.

I'm not completely happy with her glasses—they were clear, so you could actually kind of see her eyebrows through them, but it was hard to convey that with the gesso I used to paint them, so it doesn't quite translate. But the best feature of her face was that arched eyebrow on her mug shot, so I had to put it in. Also, her nose is way too long, but I think it contributes to the final effect, so...pfht!

"CinCin"—9x12 inches on Fabriano paper, materials listed above.

Here's the original:

Nostalgia

Today, for some reason, an old piece I had painted during LFI 2021 popped into my head. I have since sold it, so I only have the .jpg of it to remind myself, but I felt a sense of nostalgia for that playful style I learned from Deb Weiers, first in a class with her and then with Lesson #34 in 2021, so I decided to do another. For that one, she started with a reference photo of a guy in a vintage mug shot, so I looked for another and repeated the experience to a certain extent.

This is a fun and complex process of building up from nothing to a whole lot of something. First, pencil and charcoal marks on the paper; then a wash of three Daler Rowney inks, pooled together to cross and blend, and then more marks made with the wrong end of a paintbrush into the ink.

Then the drawing: Deb doesn't stick to her reference photo in any real way, but I like a little more realistic rendering, so I drew the face in Uniball pen, and then went in and highlighted with white gesso and shaded with India ink. Following that was some collage for the guy's bushy eyebrows, and then the addition of color for the lips and hair. Finally, the image is completed with acrylic paint for the jacket and Posca pen for the shirt stripes.

And then I followed Deb's lead and used black gesso on the background (leaving out some fun shapes in color to float in the background), to make the figure really pop. A few finishing tweaks—some freckles, some linework on the lips and on the background shapes—and it's time to add a signature.

The hair got too dark—I should have thought ahead and kept the color to pure yellow and orange at that end of the paper. I could have painted over it with white gesso and then redone the color, but I have had variable success painting over the top of gesso, so I decided to leave it be.

Although I did adhere more closely to the original image than Deb did, this piece is a reminder that being playful and adding details that are pleasing to the entire design without worrying unduly about likeness is a good thing to do occasionally! Sometimes portraiture can get really precious, but unless you're painting someone as a commission and they have to be recognizable to the relative who's paying the bill, why be so rigid?

This is Walter Smith, who was arrested and booked for breaking and entering. "WalterB&E," in all the above-named materials, on 140-lb. Fabriano paper, 9x12 inches.

Inspiration combo

I looked at a few things today and combined them to make this piece. A few weeks ago, Angela Kennedy did a lesson for LFI2024 with a redheaded model and a background filled with painted leaves. And on July 1st, Dana Primrose Bloede posted a reference photo that was her challenge for a July portrait. Since there's only one more day left, I thought I'd better get on that! 

I had initially planned to paint this in acrylics on a board, but I didn't feel like getting into all that today and decided instead to do a version of what I had thought of for that project in watercolor.

Rather than painting Angela's leaves, I used a stencil to give a feeling of seaweed in the background, and instead of doing a straight portrait of the model with chiseled cheekbones and pouty lips that Dana supplied, I decided to turn her into a mermaid.

After I made the drawing in Uniball pen, I painted a watery background, and then gave an undercoat of green to my mermaid. After that all dried, I added the stenciling and then painted over the green in various skin and shadow tones to model the planes and shadows of her face, hand, and shoulders. Like Angela's lesson, I decided to do her hair as a block of blended color rather than trying to make it look realistic by separating it into strands, and I think that suits the style of the rest of the painting.

The green skin gave me a throwback memory to an Orion, one of the alien characters on the original Star Trek. But once I got the overtones on and put the seaweed in the background, I feel like the whole mermaid thing came together.

This is Uniball pen and Paul Jackson watercolors on Fabriano 140-lb. paper, 9x12, and I'm calling her "Marina."

Angles

 Our Let's Face It 2024 assignment for last week was painting someone from a difficult angle. The teacher used a different reference photo, and painted something very colorful in oils; I chose to steal a reference photo from another student who, like me, wanted to do her own thing, and paint it in watercolor in an almost monochromatic way, using only yellows and browns with a bit of pink and purple thrown in as accent. I actually washed the entire page first with Naples Yellow, blotting off a few highlights and the whites of the eyes, so it would have a unifying color.

This was a tough one to paint, and I overworked the chin and under-chin area to the point where my paper (some Fabriano I am trying out) started to fray! I captured a fair likeness otherwise, but that chin-to-neck transition still bothers me.

This is 9x12 inches, using my Paul Jackson watercolors on Fabriano 140-lb. 25% cotton paper. I called it "Up Your Nose."