No matter what source material I look at these days, I seem drawn back to various personalities and poses created by Jenell Del Cid, perhaps because she oh-so-accommodatingly does lots of fun photo layouts with creative wardrobe and makeup choices almost every day on her Instagram page, inspiring me to keep painting her.
This one is from a photo I saved a while back, and I was all set to use it when someone else in my LFI class did a rather perfect painting from it and stopped me in my tracks. But this week, after looking fruitlessly through a bunch of other ideas and not feeling inspired by them, I decided to come back to this one. After all, when we all do the lessons on LFI, there are about 2K of us painting from the exact same reference photo, so why should I let one painting deter me from making my own? Also, Louise Thorpe and I have somewhat different styles, so mine will be my own expression according to my peculiar choices.
That said, you could characterize this as a follow-up to the first week's lesson from Kara, given that that lesson inspired me to try to continue painting more loosely, with more painterly "chunks" left to stand on their own instead of being obsessively and seamlessly blended into everything around them. I believe this is improving my paintings, and am quite pleased with this one, although I struggled a bit with the likeness.
I got the eyes a little too large and wide-open—Jenell's are a bit more languorous in the photo—but I do love their direct gaze. I had fun with color in this one too, doing the highlights in her dark hair in an intense turquoise instead of a lighter shade of the hair color. And the background worked for me too—I started out with Cobalt Violet, but it was too dark, so I moved to a Light Violet, with Light Ultramarine glazed over it in discernible strokes and then some white at the end to give a cloudy effect.
The hardest part of this entire painting was that damn flower around her neck—I struggle with accurately duplicating things with this many disparate parts, and also with conveying the texture or material from which they are made. I know that sounds crazy, given that most people have more difficulty with portraiture than with anything; but I have had a lot of practice these past five years, and that part is beginning to be second nature.
"Jenell with Flower," pencil and acrylics on thin birch board, 12x12 inches.
