Painting people you know

Painting people you know is sometimes the most perilous undertaking! You can't look at them objectively; you see them through the filter of long relationship, and you may not be aware as you paint of adding in opinions, personality quirks, or other knowledge of them that you don't possess with an anonymous reference photo. You would think that long acquaintance would lend extra skill to capturing an exact likeness, but in fact (for me, at least) it sometimes has the opposite effect, because I can't remain objective.

All that is to say, I have painted portraits (sometimes many) of people I know, and have never been quite satisfied with capturing their look. Antithetically, sometimes striving so hard to capture their likeness can also suppress their personality, so that it turns out to be a pretty picture but with no individuality shining through.

I may just be musing about all of this as a pre-emptive disclaimer, since I am posting a picture of one of the people closest to me in life, and I'm hoping people don't shriek and say, That looks nothing like her! I don't think they will; but I do admit that I once again have failed to quite capture that charming but damn elusive nose!

Here is Kirsten, in a silly moment when her unruly hair has taken on a life of its own and sprouted out of its bun to occupy a larger atmosphere.

"Kirsten and Hair"—Pencil and watercolor on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 7 3/4 x 8 inches.

Silly Selfies

Today's lesson was to make a silly selfie. It was supposed to be using Sharpies on Yupo paper, and blending with a Q-tip and alcohol...but I have one Sharpie (black), no alcohol (except pink wine), and no Yupo. So I picked my toned-tan paper (because it was the only smooth-surface paper I had), and used my new Arteza and Huhu marker pens, and messed with the hair a little with some water while the markers were still wet. The pose was foreshortened, so a little challenging. Not great art, but a fun occupation for a couple of hours.

Another Ukrainian woman

About two-thirds of the way through yesterday's painting, I wished I had done it in watercolor—so much easier to get nuance and shadow into the flowers, and her face, being rather small, was kind of a pain in the acrylics as well. (I keep looking at that mouth—there's something wrong with the angle.)

I didn't want to make a complete do-over, though (I mostly dislike painting the same subject twice), so I found another reference photo and painted a different Ukrainian woman in traditional dress, although without the flower crown this time.

I painted this loosely with my #12 Silver "Black Velvet" brush, and did the small details with a rigger, so it stayed wet and soft. The tangled heap of necklaces came out a little messy, which felt cartoony next to the face details, so I used my Arteza felt pens to do a very little bit of shaping up of some of those. Other than that, just pencil and watercolor, and a few touches of gel pen. I used a pale wash of my favorite Daniel Smith turquoise for the background, because it granulates so nicely; otherwise, all Paul Jackson watercolors. I'm much happier with today's result.

My plan for the day was to clean up the kitchen; but wouldn't you rather have a new painting? (I'll still work on the kitchen.)

"Ukraine Woman"—pencil, watercolors, Arteza pens, gold gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches. Available.

Ukrainian Divochyy

I decided today to try my hand at recreating the traditional folk dress of Ukrainian girls—the Vyshyvanka (embroidered shirt) and wreath. It was almost as complicated to paint as I'm sure it is to construct, and I ended up elaborating with both Stabilo pencils and Uniball pen to pick out some of the details. I'm sure I didn't do it justice, but it was fun to try. This divochyy (maiden) was also prettier (and much less prissy-looking) in the photo than I managed to pull off, but I did my best, so I'm letting her stand.

I feel that it's cultural traditions like this that will be lost (along with so much else) should Ukraine be subsumed by Russia. Despite the odds, I'm hoping the Ukrainians can pull this off and save their democracy, their identity, their independence.

"Ukrainian Divochyy"—pencil, acrylic paints, Stabilo pencils, Uniball pen, on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

If anyone would like to purchase this painting, I will donate the funds to one of the organizations sending supplies to Ukraine. Send me a message on Instagram @losangeles_melliott.

Dogs

Today I had a little commission to paint. Last time S.T.A.R.T. (which stands for Shelter Transport Animal Rescue Team) had a fundraiser, I offered to auction off a pet portrait for a donation. Someone won the item and then asked, if he paid extra would I do both of his dogs? I told him yes, and planned to get back to him with a higher price tag. He sent me reference photos, and I realized that the higher price tag was warranted; not only were the photos not great quality (and had things like half a head chopped off), but the only picture of the dogs together was with one of them lying prone on his stomach on the kitchen floor, and I wasn't going to paint a full-length dog!

I ended up picking out the two photos in which the dogs were both facing forward and looking at the owner (camera), then cutting out the dogs, scaling them so they were approximately the right size in proportion to one another (I say approximately because I only had that one photo of the two of them to go on), and pasting them into Photoshop next to each other to create a composite photo from which I could work. I'm hoping that the person doesn't mind that Bailey's tongue is hanging fully out of his mouth...but if he does, he should have sent more photos! (Plus, I love painting dog tongue, the colors are cool.)

Such is the lot of dog portrait painters. (And sometimes of human ones, too, although I haven't yet painted a picture of anyone with their tongue hanging out.)

I ended up waiting so long to get this portrait done that I decided I couldn't charge him any more for it, but at least the charity received their donation, no matter what. Here is my watercolor of Bailey and Samson. I hope their "daddy" likes it.

"Bailey Samson"—watercolors and a little gel pen on coldpress watercolor paper, 12x9 inches (with border for framing).

Artist portraits

Before I'm done with these classes, I'm going to have quite the collection of artists' likenesses—every time I don't care for the lesson, or don't have the materials I need to complete it, I contemplate struggling to do it anyway and then decide to paint the artist instead, particularly if they are photogenic and have a good reference photo handy on their Instagram page!

Today was no exception: While I had nothing but admiration (and awe) for how Phoebe did her own version of Svitlana Prokopenko's assignment for PYHAS 2022, reproducing with gels and pastes and thickeners and who knows what other media what Svitlana painted in oils because Phoebe doesn't do oils, I had zero ambition to emulate that effort. (I don't do oils either.) I had a pre-painted acrylic background lying around that I thought would be good as a backdrop for a portrait of Svitlana, since her primary colors are delicate whites, pinks, lavenders, and reds, so I drew and then painted an artist portrait instead.

I miscalculated by painting her sweater what turned out to be a rather bilious shade of green, but I'm too lazy to change it; maybe I'll go back and make it another color, but I thought that making it red would be too strong and the lavender would be overwhelming with all the other purple in the picture. I didn't want to do it in its true color, which was a rather unprepossessing beige, because combined with the hair it would be too light and too bland; thus the green. Oh well...

"Svitlana"—pencil and acrylic paints on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

"Don't waste paint!"

If someone asked me, What is the one thing Emma Petitt emphasizes during her lessons? my answer would have to be "Don't waste paint!" She constantly reiterates: Don't clean that brush, go back over your highlights with it again, go over your darks, and when there's hardly any paint left on the brush, scrub it over the surface to get some nice ghosting effects over the color.

I have taken her exhortation to heart to such an extent that I have had a whole line of portraits emerge from the backgrounds that I make on watercolor paper with whatever leftover paint I have on my palette at the end of a portrait session. One portrait's colors become the next portrait's background, and no two are alike, depending on what colors and in what quantity I use.

Here is yet another one, serendipity that emerged from thrift! I rolled and scrubbed the colors into a piece of paper, and then scraped with a credit card and made marks into the surface with the hind end of a paintbrush. I left it to dry, and tonight I took a look at it only to see the ghost of this young woman's head and shoulders emerging from the background. The outline and colors were so perfect that I didn't even consider applying more paint; instead, I grabbed a couple of shades of brown Conté pencils and simply defined the outlines and added a few shadows to the appropriate areas. It took about 20 minutes, and there she was!

"GirlHead"—acrylics and Conté pencil on Fluid 140-lb watercolor paper, about 8.5x10.5 inches.