Acrylic inks

I haven't done any work with my acrylic inks for some time now—there was a period of about a year, not too long ago, when I used nothing else, but when I started painting with acrylics (opaque) I got out of the habit, and when I didn't use acrylics, I went back to watercolor to develop a looser style.

But this week's instructor at LFI2022, Christa Forrest, specified acrylic inks as the week's medium, and I was happy to return to them. Turns out, however, that the ones she uses appear to be a lot more like semi-opaque liquid acrylics than like the mostly transparent Daler Rowney inks I use. Her painting this week was also painted on a birch board with a watercolor ground, and I didn't have one of those, nor do I enjoy painting on top of that ground with inks, because they seem to sit on top and I prefer the permeability of paper with inks. So already I was planning in what ways I would need to diverge from her lesson: No birch board, transparent inks on paper, no Procreate grid to start me off; and also, I wasn't enamored of her model. It's not that it was a difficult angle (it was), or that she wasn't an attractive girl (she was), but that I just didn't care for a piece in which so much of the face was cut off—it was pretty much all cheek, neck, and ear, with the focus being on her wild head of hair.

So, I considered finding a different model but making use of the same colors, layout, and wild curly locks, and then realized that she was staring me in the face from Christa's Instagram page. An artist portrait is a bold segue, but I've done it before, so I decided to go for it.

I feel like there is something essential missing from her expression, although I have looked over every bit of it minutely and can't figure out what I missed. I had to redraw her eyes several times, as they are more wideset than they initially seem; and for once, I think that rather than making someone's eyes too large, an all-too-easy thing to do, I instead erred on the side of slightly too small. I also didn't quite get the angle of the face/head right, but since I lined the features up with the angle I did capture, that's all good.

I really enjoyed working with the inks again, particularly because I combined it with using my water-ful Silver Velvet brush to blend things more loosely than before. I also had big fun with the hair, to which I gave a purple undercoat and then combined Payne's Grey and white Daler Rowneys with final dark accents in black India ink. The shirt was supposed to be collage, but given how poorly that sometimes works on paper, I gave it a pass and left her in her simple purple shell top.

"Christa"—pencil and Daler Rowney inks on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Mixed Media Massacre

This was a lesson in paying attention. And you would think, after last week, when I used gold ink instead of white to do the highlights on my waterlogged girl, that I would have been more careful, but no.

This was Week Two on PYHAS (Paint Your Heart and Soul) 2022, conducted by the talented and eclectic Joan Martin, and it was an exercise in ultimate use of mixed media. First we were to sketch and shade the portrait with soft pencil on a tan board background; then we were to roll on a thin layer of white paint (acrylic or gesso) with a soft foam rubber roller, paying attention to putting the paint where the highlights of the picture naturally fell; then we were to go back in with a black oil-based colored pencil to redefine our drawing; after that was tinting with colored ink; then we were supposed to intensify certain areas by going over them with various shades of gray marker; and finally, we were to do highlights with our white gel pens. Oh, and if you felt like it, you could also put in white marks with the edge of a credit card, but that one was optional!

Here is a portrait of Mimi, Joan's finished product. Cool, huh?

So, to continue being my contrary self, I decided that rather than painting Mimi, who Joan chose because she has a wealth of life in her face with which to play around, I would do a portrait of my friend Phoebe. It was the white hair that inspired me; Phoebe has a shock of stand-up white and gray/black hair that's fun to paint.

I did the pencil sketch and it was fine; I'm not much of a sketcher, infinitely preferring contour drawing, but I can do it when I have to. My shading isn't up to snuff, but since it was going to be subsumed in a bunch of other media, I went for it and did what I had to do.

I didn't have any tan board, so I used my gray mixed media paper, which holds up well against almost anything. It didn't bother me that it wasn't tan, although it did make it harder to then achieve skin tones over the top. Oh, well.

I moved to the next step, which was to roll thin white paint onto the drawing using a soft foam roller. Hmm. I don't have a soft foam roller. But I do have a hard rubber roller, which I use for all my abstract backgrounds that I do for my acrylic paintings, I'll just use that! That'll work!

Right. Not the greatest idea. I basically obliterated two-thirds of the drawing and made a big mess, including getting splatters of white paint in the clear space out beyond the face. No worries, I thought, I'll just paint that all in with the white, and then I'll salvage the face with my black colored pencil by over-drawing and shading everything I did before. After all, I can still see the basic outlines, and can refer back to the photo to recreate it.

This is where the crucial not-paying-attention moment (see "gold highlights" above) reared its ugly head. As if I hadn't given myself enough of a challenge with the badly rolled paint, I reached out for a black colored pencil and instead picked up a Stabilo All. People who know what that pencil does are immediately groaning in sympathy. See, it makes a nice solid black line; but when you put water on whatever you drew with it, whatever the pencil is made of (does anyone know? I don't!) is activated and turns dark, dark, dark, and also spreads like a mofo.

So, when I moved on to the next step, which was to "colorize" the portrait with my acrylic inks, I got a rude awakening when everything—line work and shading—started turning BLACK. I don't have a photo of that step, because I was desperately trying to keep it from going south.

I almost tossed it at that point but then I decided, You have just created more of a challenge for yourself, don't be a wuss. So I went ahead and activated the Stabilo everywhere, giving myself a lot darker outlines and darks than I had planned, but it mostly worked. I blotted a LOT.

I let that dry thoroughly because in theory Stabilo only activates once, it doesn't keep on going (lies, all lies), and then I went back in with my acrylic inks, in shades of Flesh, Red Earth, and (of course because it is Phoebe) Opera Pink. Some of the color got muddy from the Stabilo, and some of the Stabilo lifted too much because of the color; again, I blotted, I pushed the colors around, I thinned things out.

I didn't really need to use the gray markers to intensify, which was good because I didn't have any; but I did use a couple of Conté crayons in Sanguine and White to feather and soften some areas over the top of the Stabilo mess.

Finally, I went back in with my white Signo gel pen and fiddled with the highlights until I got them the way I wanted them.

So here is an extremely effortful version of my friend Phoebe, styling courtesy of Joan Martin. It's kinda cool; but I could have painted a "normal" painting in half the time with probable better results!

 

Here we go again

No graphite this week—instead it was charcoal. And although I bought some in order to complete the assignment, when it came down to it this morning I just didn't want to play. I was tired and grumpy and didn't feel like getting messy or struggling with an unfamiliar medium. So I decided to skip this week's assignment and focus on completing something for one of the other classes for which I am enrolled.

But...I liked the model, especially the strong contrasts in her face; and I'm cranky from not painting anything for a week! So tonight I got out my Silver "Black Velvet" brush, which holds a lot of water, and painted her portrait on greytone mixed media paper, using only layers of Payne's Grey watercolor. After I was done, I couldn't resist adding a little rosiness to her face and, since her hair is wet from either the shower or swimming, I also put in a turquoise and blue background with the Daniel Smith turquoise that granulates a little. And I dabbed in a little white iridescent ink for highlights, which I kind of regret, because it doesn't go with the rest, but it felt like it needed just a little pop.

It's not what I was told to do; but I'm pretty pleased with it. I'm hoping, however, that every lesson this year isn't going to be some form of drawing, shading, and cross-hatching; I took this class to paint portraits, and that's what I want to do.

"Roberta"—pencil, watercolor, and ink on 184-lb. toned gray hotpress paper, 9x12 inches.

Going my own way

It's the first day of the first week of Let's Face It 2022, and already I'm off the rails, due to a combination of fear, laziness, impatience, and personal preference.

Our first lesson of the year was to make a meticulously shaded pencil drawing from a reference photo. I watched the first 20 minutes of the demo and thought, I'm not doing this. Mostly it's because I'm not skilled with pencils and shading; I know the admirable (and correct) thing to do would be to go ahead and make the drawing, learning something new and honing my skills in that area—but if I'm never ever going to make finished pencil drawings except as an exercise, then what's the point?

I didn't want to do without a lesson this week, however, just because I didn't like the medium—and I did like the model, and did learn something from the teacher's approach to the subject. So, since it was 6 a.m. and I was already wide awake, I decided instead to paint her. I already had a leftover background from a few days ago, so I used that as my ground and painted the portrait on top of it, a little more opaquely than the last few.

The teacher (Lauren Rudolph, a very talented lady with a pencil!) honed in on the face but left the head scarf, the hands, and the shoulders a lot more sketchy, so I decided to do the same in my painting. I think they still give the effect. Apart from making the eyes a little too large, I feel like I caught the likeness pretty well, and I am happy with the color palette.

I'm calling her "Zahra"—pencil and acrylics on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

The electronic critic

Something I have recently discovered is that once you scan something and put it up on the computer screen, all is revealed! What is it about the electronic eye that sees every flaw when the human eye can't? It's frustrating.

I painted a portrait today for a Secret Santa exchange (yes, I know I'm late, but we have until Jan. 11th to get it there), and was completely satisfied with it...until I scanned it and saw that one side of her face was noticeeably flatter/thinner than the other, that her mouth wasn't at quite the right angle, and that I needed to reshape a couple of teeth to look like her actual smile. So, I picked it back up off the scanner, and filled in the cheek, re-slanted the top lip a little, and fixed her teeth, and now, at last, I think I have a good likeness.

It was supposed to be a $15 value, but it was also supposed to encompass "what you do" as a "creative," and this is what I do...so Angie's getting a portrait.

No worries about her seeing this unless I call it to her attention; it was a random draw-a-name exchange on Instagram, and I don't know her from Adam. And I used a screenshot from a video she posted as my source photo. But I hope that when she receives it she is pleased with her little Christmas portrait.

"Angie"—pencil and acrylics and Stabilo (brown) on watercolor paper, 8.5x11 inches. I used one of my abstract backgrounds because she is already quite a pink young lady, from Toledo, Ohio!

Pensive

I was looking up some poetry for someone today and came across a photo of Anaïs Nin in an uncharacteristically pensive pose, with face propped on hand. It was black and white, but based on a few color photos of her I was able to get a general idea of her hair color at this point in her life (earlier and later she must have dyed it dark/black, I think, because it was so radically different), and I extrapolated the rest based on the light in the photo.

I also, of course, used my leftover-paint background as a basis for the color palette. These paintings are a little pale and a little pink sometimes, but for this particular painting the colors seemed appropriate. I'm enjoying this sort of scrubby painting method I'm using on these.

I thought about breaking out some gold/gilt paint for the necklace, but decided it would take away from the otherwise extremely matte feel of this, so I stuck with paint. Naples Yellow is an extremely versatile color, working for blonde hair, gold jewelry, and some skin tones as well. 

"Anaïs"—pencil, acrylic paints, and a little Stabilo All pencil in brown, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

The power of suggestion

I am enjoying the employment of random backgrounds to suggest the subject matter for each next painting. I don't know how much longer I will pursue this trend, but it's fun to use the leftover paint from the previous work to create a new background that in turn dictates the kind of painting that will be made next.

After I painted Leonor Fini, the colors I mostly had left over were all the ones used for her skin tones—Naples Yellow, Titan Mars Pale, and some Magenta. I used them to make a new background, but wondered what I would do with one so relentlessly, well, PINK. Today, though, I browsed my saved reference photos and found one of a wonderful old lady with bright blue eyes, wrapped up in a hat and fur coat and standing in front of a gray coastline. Her face was such a beautiful combination of white, pink, and a little pale blue/lavender that I knew I had found today's subject. Here's an early "process" photo to show how I started.

As I did with the others, I almost used the paint more as a stain than as an opaque coating, allowing the background to show through or at least to dictate what I used on top of it so as to preserve its effect.

I didn't reproduce the cold gray background because I liked keeping this one, but I did incorporate a little turquoise (after I used it to mix her eye color) to drop it back a bit and give it a more delicate sunrise feel.

I also didn't paint in all of her many wrinkles, but rather tried to convey their presence by both the face shapes and the directionality of some of the paintbrush strokes. I could have done more detail, but I think the idea of age is sufficiently conveyed here by the depth of the eyelids, the gently sagging cheeks and jaws, and some of the facial creases.

I wish I had thought ahead to give a better impression of the hat and coat as fur, but I was primarily focused on them as a frame for her face, so they are fairly matte.

"Pink Lady"—pencil, acrylics, and a little Stabilo All, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

And I have another background made from her leftovers for another day.