I tried again, with this one, to muster up some quality of a Malcolm Liepke painting, but once I finished it, it also felt to me like a painting from a former century, in some ways, with its dark atmospheric background and the more realistic focus on a face and body with less specific and more painterly clothing, so as to draw the eye to the personality.
This is, again, one of my favorite muses, Jenell Del Cid, @duhhcid on Instagram. I immediately fell in love with this pose, with her serious, slightly world-weary expression, all wrapped up in the giant fleece coat. In the portrait it comes off more like fur than it does fleece, but I didn't want to get more specific than this, because I felt it would be too itsy and also detract from the charisma of the model.
The background and the shadows are a mix of Ultramarine Blue Light and Payne's Grey, while the rest is a limited palette of Titan Mars Pale, Pyrrole Red, Titanium White, and some Raw Umber for the hair and eyes. I mixed a little gold into the eyes and highlighted the hair a tiny bit with some Titan Buff. But that's it.
When I was done with all that, something still felt lacking, so I scrubbed in tiny bits of Titan Green Pale, which is a muted celery color, and that gave it the Liepke touch; although it's hard to pick out if you look for it, it's ghosted over parts of both the skin and the fur.
This is "Fuzzy Jenell," acrylic on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.
