Back to Emma style!

Our lesson this week is with one of my favorites, Emma Petitt! It was a pretty large and complex lesson—she encouraged us to go big, and to paint on canvas if we had it, so I did both. I decided 18x24 was just too big for my subject, so I went 16x20, but that's still considerably bigger than I've been working lately. But since the lesson was two full figures, tiny heads to giant toes, we needed the space.

I struggled a little with the canvas, especially with making the background—because it's not absorbent in the same way that watercolor paper is, the background got a little heavier and more opaque than I prefer—certainly more so than Emma advocates. But, I moved along and tried to use it to my advantage.

I found two separate photos of young women slouching on sofas and put them together. I wanted to convey the idea of them on the sofa without actually painting the sofa, and I'm not sure it came off, they're kinda floaty.

I used China marker for the drawing, per Emma's new method (she used to use charcoal), but I didn't find (as she said) that it resisted movement; it did in fact smudge some black/gray into some of my paint and I had to let parts dry and then go over them again to obscure that, since this style demands a freshness of color unpolluted by grays. I also used a Stabilo to reinforce some lines at the end and then had to do more "fixes" when I smudged that as well. This was a lot of working and re-working that took away some of the spontaneity; and I had some trouble with the hands and feet, as expected. But—I did it, and I'm mostly pleased.

I called this "Footsie" because while they are sitting and not touching, there's a little frisson of anticipation in those feet! This is a bit darker than it looks in real life—indoor photography with inadequate lighting! Thank you, @emma_petitt_art, as usual, for a fun and thorough lesson.

Strachans!

A few days back I made a watercolor of Kara Strachan Bullock, and today when I went seeking a reference photo from which to practice the "Nadyia" technique again, I decided I'd better also do Kara's artist sister, Deanna Strachan Wilson, or there would be shouts of favoritism! No, really I wanted to use her photo because she has almost completely white hair, and I thought it would have a cool unfinished look next to the full-on cross-hatch, pen, watercolor, and acrylic treatment of the face.

I didn't really intend to go so dark with my colors (she's pretty pale), but the brush pens are so intense that I had to bring other things up to match them. Also, I mistakenly picked up a green pen when I was going for a gray, so there are some interesting shades incorporated. But over all, I feel like it worked, and I had fun, once again, using the Nadyia method.

"Deanna SB"—Ohuhu and Arteza pens, watercolor, white acrylic, gel pens, Uniball pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Tachina Take Two

Not exactly Take Two—I didn't paint a do-over, I just spent another half hour slightly altering the angle and placement of the ear (which I discovered was the culprit, rather than the location) to look slightly more like the photo. Of course, in the course of doing that I took another hard look at the reference photo and discovered that the real problem lay in the angle of the entire head, which I didn't quite grasp as I drew it. But, with the ear shift and some additional tweaks of highlights and shadows here and there, I'm happier with her, to the point that I'm willing to post her on Instagram.

Here below is the reference photo, from which you can discern my remark about the tilt of the head/face. Close, but no cigar, as they say.

I still plan to try her again in watercolor, because she deserves a more accurate rendering—but maybe not for a few days!

Texture!

My friend Phoebe is a magician. She makes all these heavily textured backgrounds, and then by some sleight of hand I have not yet fathomed she draws and paints perfectly rendered portraits over them with each highlight and every eyelash placed precisely where she decides they should be, using all sorts of esoteric media, undeterred by the damned bumpy surface! Well, I'm just here to say...Can't do it!

I decided to try today, so I put a big glop of gesso on my paper and spread it around, then roughed it up with an old credit card and let it dry. Then I attempted to make (in charcoal, just like Phoebe does) my base drawing. After I made it about halfway, I gave up, rubbed out most of it, and went back in with pencil.

I tried some watercolor on the surface but found that it beaded up and I couldn't control it, so I switched to acrylic. I made a great big daub of it for a couple of hours, and finally did some fixes with a Stabilo and a gel pen and called it good. It's not good, but I'm done with it!

This, poor woman, is "Tachina." Gesso, pencil, acrylics, Stabilo, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 12x9 inches. Someday soon I will paint her with a big sloppy watercolor brush on some nice smooth paper and do her justice.

LFI 2022 Week 7

Hard to believe we're seven weeks into the new year already! I haven't been doing many of these LFI lessons, because a lot of them have been either in graphite or designed to learn virtually in Procreate or Artrage, neither of which appeals to me. But THIS week was a lesson I could get behind! I did have to splurge and buy some marker pens and brushes to duplicate what the teacher was doing, but the method looked so fun that I didn't mind! (I ended up buying some wrong pens, so I still had to improvise a little, but I managed a fair facsimile of what she was doing.)

The teacher was Nadyia Duff; as usual I decided to paint the teacher instead of the reference photo, and boy did I have big fun. This is a much more illustrative style than I am used to, utilizing a lot of different media, and doing a bunch of hatching and cross-hatching, which I hate in pencil but love in color! There are several layers here—first marker pens, then water-based brush pens, then watercolor and acrylic, and then we came back in and added/replaced some of the hatching that got lost under the other media, wherever we wanted things to pop. Lastly, she does these fun funky backgrounds of one-point perspective line drawing with no color that give her work such a unique look! I didn't do so well with the perspective part, but I love the effect of the full-color figure against the black-and-white background.

I'm putting in process photos, because this really was a long, involved creation.

The drawing:

The first layer of hatching:

The water brushes (I kinda panicked here, it was so dark!):

The last two layers (watercolor/acrylics, and then replacement hatching):

And, the finished piece!

"Nadyia Duff"—Ohuhu color marker pens, Arteza water-based brush pens, watercolor, acrylics, Signo white gel pen, Uniball for the black details, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, 9x12 inches.

Capturing the elusive likeness

Some days things just come together and you actually pull off what you set out to do. I haven't painted for a couple of days and was feeling rusty this morning as I searched through my archive of saved reference photos for someone to paint. I have been a bit out of sorts the past week or so, and haven't been doing much, truth be told, besides binging Netflix and taking care of a few tasks for my upcoming teaching stint at UCLA. Oh, and I shipped out three portraits, all of which sold on Etsy this week after nearly nine months of no sales, so that was massively cheering.

Anyway, after exercise and breakfast, I decided today was a good day to paint, but I couldn't settle on who or how. Watercolor? Acrylics? Size? Face only or go for a scene? Then I remembered that I had asked friend Kirsti to ferret out some photos for me of my cousin Kirsten, a truly elusive subject when it comes to digital records. I myself have precious few photos of her, and most date back to childhood or early 20s. But people around Kirsti seem to get their picture taken rather frequently, so I knew she'd have at least a few (even though she is strictly forbidden to post them on social media by said cousin), and sure enough, she came through for me.

I started this portrait in some doubt that I could catch an accurate likeness: Kirsten has distinctive features, but typically remains completely unadorned by eye makeup, jewelry, and fancy hairstyles, all the accoutrements that allow one to fudge a likeness by accentuating them, so I was nervous. But as I said earlier, some days serendipity is in your favor, and two and a half hours later, I had a portrait I felt confident anyone could recognize. The nose is a tiny bit more delicate than in reality (that happens to me a lot in acrylic), but is faithful as to shape. I also had big fun using one of my abstract backgrounds and incorporating all the background colors into the image itself.

I hope Kirsten agrees that I "caught" her, and also doesn't mind that she will be plastered all over social media today, because we artists are an egotistical pack and want to get all the acknowledgment from our public that we can, given that we do all our labor in splendid isolation!

"Kirsten"—pencil, acrylic paints, stencil, and a tiny bit of brown Stabilo on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Just for fun

Today I decided to do a semi-loose watercolor of someone, and the winner (or loser?) was the artist Kara Bullock, who runs the school from which I am taking the Let's Face It 2022 class (among others—also discovered my big influencers, Deb Weiers and Emma Petitt, there). She is always posting great pix like this with exaggerated expressions of happiness, shock, and enthusiasm, and she has a big, infectious, goofy grin that is universally appealing.

This was all done with my #12 Silver "Black Velvet" round brush, which holds a ton of water and keeps me from getting too fussy, although I did add a few key details with my tiny rigger brush as well. I don't know what I did before I "discovered" the rigger—what a great tool for thin strokes and outlines.

No monumental works of art today, but it was fun capturing Kara's likeness in this unique pose.

"Kara B"—pencil, Pul Jackson watercolors, Signo white gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, 9x12 (with a 1/2-inch border).