Departure

I was reminded this week that I used to do drawings/paintings of all kinds of things, from recipe ingredients to flowers to street scenes, in my sketchbook, but that since I took up portraits, that's all I have painted for a few years now. And, well, although they are still my first love, it is possible to get a little stale no matter what your subject matter. So when I saw a photo of Lynn's hollyhocks on Facebook this week and remembered having painted them once before, I decided to do a new painting of that subject, with nary a face to be seen.

This is pencil and watercolor on 90-lb. Strathmore watercolor paper, 9x12 (including a 1/2-inch border all around). It's good to keep your skills up with other subject matter occasionally!

Here are my other hollyhock paintings—one done in France in 2013, the other done from a photo in 2019 as part of the 30x challenge.

Canine Cutie

Today's watercolor and Uniball sketch is Marlie J. Dogg, the bookstore manager and all-around potentate in the household of L.S. Quinn, Executive Director of The Reading Room CLE in Cleveland Ohio, aka Galinda Upland (don't ask me!).

Marlie has ruled that roost for several years now as the worthy successor of Cha-Cha the Beloved, and I have signally failed thus far in my duty to memorialize her in art. So today, here she is in all her heavily ironic glory, giving us a slightly jaundiced grin and a wink from the comfort of her car bed (which I took the liberty of rendering in color instead of sticking to its rather dull charcoal). I know she is a highly discerning critic, but humbly hope she will be at least satisfied, if not flattered by, this fond portrait.

Drawn in Uniball pen and embellished with Paul Jackson signature watercolors on 90-lb. Strathmore watercolor paper, @ 9x12 inches. All Hail Mighty Marlie.

Quick Regency portrait

There was a woman on the "Dull Women" Facebook page who had such the look of Regency England about her that I couldn't resist painting her and altering her wardrobe to fit in with that era (what little of it that shows). A delicate Bridgerton beauty with pillowy lips and gorgeous flowing curls who was just crying out to be memorialized. She has unusual eyes—golden, with long thin pupils. I actually made them rounder than they were in the photo, because she looked alien when I painted them exactly as they were!

Anyway, this is Abbey, in pencil and watercolors, with a little silver Signo pen to make her necklace. I painted it on cheap watercolor paper that I use for my beginning classes, because it was the only thing immediately to hand (I have a block of Fluid somewhere, but...), so the background buckled a little when I gave it a second coat. But it was good to do it just to keep my hand in.

Mixed media muddle

I haven't been doing many of the Let's Face It 2024 assignments; I have to pace myself with the painting these days, and if I have an idea of mine that I want to carry out, I do that instead of someone else's. But I love Maria Pace-Wynters's work, and wanted to try her crazy mixed media portrait for myself, so even though I'm a couple of weeks late, I sat down today and applied myself.

It was difficult for me on several levels. First of all, I've never been a person to use things like collage or pens or pastels creatively and, as I have mentioned before, I draw for the sake of starting a painting, not because I love it. Maria loves to draw, and you can see it in all the tiny details she incorporates into her pieces. She also loves to layer and layer and layer, with paint, ink, pastels, pens, you name it, and I didn't have more than half of the things she was using, so I had to compensate with other stuff. 

I ended up with something that I didn't hate, but I don't love it either. Some parts stand out too much and others not enough, and my collage choices are clumsy and don't necessarily work (either materials or colors). And not having the right media meant that I ended up with a muddier result. It was fun (and challenging and frustrating) to try something different, and if I did this about 10 more times I might make something I really liked! But...I doubt that I will. Still, I'm glad I did this one.

She's called Hannah, because I used the face (though nothing else) from a woman named Hannah in my "Dull Women" Facebook group.

"Hannah"—acrylic inks, watercolors, acrylic paints, Uniball pen, Posca pen, gold metallic medium, Signo gel pen, colored pencils, and paper collage pieces, on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress paper, 9x12 inches.

El Naddaha

El Naddaha, "the caller," is a siren that haunts the Nile in Egypt. She is described as a tall, slender, beautiful woman with white—some say transparent—skin and long flowing hair. She calls to a man by his name in her soft, sweet, hypnotic voice, and lures him to his doom in the river. No man called by her can resist, and none survive their encounter.

I found a reference photo I loved for both its color and ambiance and also its interesting angle/perspective, and have been wanting to paint this for awhile, as a sort of companion piece to my "Nereid" portrait. Both the mood and the story are a bit darker than that one; I used similar colors for the background, but layered them more richly and did a finishing glaze of thin lime green to unite the entire picture—background, hair, and skin—to maximize the impression that she is submerged in water except for her face. This was one of those backgrounds that I was initially loathe to paint over, because I really liked how it turned out; but you have to sacrifice one thing sometimes to achieve another.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the white parts around her neck and chest that are supposed to signify a slight disturbance in the light on the water, but after reworking them several times, I decided to let them be. Perhaps I will revisit in a few days, when I can look at it more objectively.

When I initially saw the photo I thought of Ophelia of Shakespeare fame, but didn't like the passive nature of her story, so I looked for another with which to identify my portrait and found the ominous Egyptian legend recounted above.

The "Caller" is acrylic, with layered stencils for the background, on thin birch board, and is 16x12 inches.

LFI assignment...

As usual, that's a "sort of." The painting was supposed to be done in oils, but I don't use that medium. So I decided to do a watercolor. The assignment was someone looking down and slightly to the side, so, in other words, a more difficult pose. The teacher did a self portrait, but I had been watching a charming movie (Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School) on Prime, and was fascinated with the facial expressions of the actor Robert Carlyle. (You might know him better from The Full Monty, way back when.) So I switched from watching it on my TV to viewing it online so I could take a series of screenshots of him in various attitudes, and I managed to capture this one of him looking down in approximately the attitude we were supposed to capture for our assignment.

This is vastly overworked, and the colors are more intense than perhaps they should be in some areas, but I really tried to capture the shapes of the shadows and highlights rather than focusing specifically on the face itself. I don't know that I caught it, but I gave it my best shot.

"Frank" (the character's name)—pencil and watercolor on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Beautiful substrates

The definition of a substrate in art is "a foundational or base material on which another material is applied or mounted." But the definition in biology is what I like to think of when creating one: "The surface or material on or from which an organism lives, grows, or obtains its nourishment." In other words, applying that one to art means that your figure in the forefront is growing organically from out of its background.

My mentor for creating substrates was and probably always will be Emma Petitt. She is the one who taught me to use a roller to apply random strokes of a variety of color to my ground, allowing them to cover, reveal, or blend with one another to create something special; and then, over the top of that (which can be plenty all by itself) I also discovered the joys of applying stencil images to highlight colors, shapes, and styles in service of the image I intend to paint over them.

I haven't done one of these in a while, being content instead to use more stark, one-color grounds in order to focus all the attention on the figure. But in some cases the rich background "grows" the figure from within it, and I'm hoping that's the impression this portrait ends up giving.

I call it "Nereid," which in Greek mythology is a kind of nymph, a female spirit of sea waters. In this one she has just burst from the water and is shaking her head, scattering drops everywhere as she sheds the excess.

I had some tough decisions to make on this one. I am not experienced in painting water, so although I initially considered painting a pool around the lower part of her, I was sufficiently in love with my substrate in order not to want to mess it up with something that might not look as realistic as I would have liked; I will practice that on some other painting without as much invested. I also couldn't decide, initially, whether I should paint her in much paler shades of white and cream with bluish/greenish highlights, like a fish that emerged from the deep. But I ultimately decided that nereids probably spend a bit of time in shallow waters or preening on rocks like the Little Mermaid, so I kept her in mostly realistic tones.

The light was interesting in this one, because it was sort of top down from right to left, so she has highlights and darks on both sides of her body. The perspective was also a challenge, with that upturned chin and nose, hidden forehead, and weirdly angled ear. Finally, I think i reworked that hand about five times, having trouble getting all the fingers the correct lengths and shapes and applying the highlights correctly. But I'm done...I think!

"Nereid"—pencil, acrylics, and stenciling on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.