Serendipity? or fate?

This week's lesson from PYHAS2022 is from artist Julie Lee. Julie and I have a special relationship of which neither of us was aware until recently (and she still isn't but she's about to be): I saw a black and white photo of her online (not labeled) and saved it in my Reference Photos folder as a possible portrait subject; then, in December of last year, I made a painting of her that I called "Substrate Woman" (not yet knowing who she was), because I had created a beautiful abstract background with leftover acrylics and wanted to try painting just the lights and darks of a figure over it, leaving the substrate showing through for the rest of the skin and hair.

I did so, but didn't feel like it was a total success, since the contrasts of the Titanium White and Payne's Grey were a little extreme against my combination of warm browns and yellows. Then I set it aside.

Today, after the absolutely masterful lesson from Julie (painting a self portrait), I wasn't yet ready to do my own, since I want to order a birch panel on which to paint it; so I went back and dragged out my portrait of Julie and, using some of the blending and color placement techniques I observed in her lesson, I got out some Naples Yellow, some Raw Sienna, some primary yellow and a cobalt blue, and a bit of Payne's Grey and did a more painterly layer over the previous portrait, still leaving some substrate showing but doing a better job of accentuating and blending.

Parts of it got a bit smudgy, since I had used a navy blue Stabilo pencil on the original, which smears when you hit it with anything wet. But I managed not to do too much damage there, or else covered it up, and I'm much happier with my result.

I will do my own, using all of Julie's methods and advice, once my birch board arrives. Can't wait! It's a really exciting lesson.

"Julie Lee 2"—pencil, acrylic paints, and Stabilo on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x11 inches.

Substitution failure

Our lesson this week in LFI2022 was to do a monoprint of a person in profile, and then draw their portrait over the top. Our teachers always encourage us to use whatever materials we have, if we don't buy the specific tools, but sometimes there's just no substitution. In this case, I don't have a printer hooked up to my computer at the moment, and can't access one right now, so couldn't create the monoprint. I foolishly decided to try to fake it.

With the monoprint, you take a computer printout of a mirror image of your intended drawing, you scribble all over it with pastels, or Conté crayons, or CarbOthello pencils, and then you wet your (smooth) watercolor paper and put your monoprint face down on that to transfer the smudgy vague outline and shadows of your image onto the page. The teacher did this three times in a row, just to get sufficient background.

Then, you look at your opposite image, and draw in details loosely over the top of your more vague background, and you get a lovely squiggly loose shaded portrait.

What I ended up doing was drawing the mirror image in pencil, then acting as if that were the print-out and putting on the transfer media. But...my transfer image ripped when it got wet (too much water? Conté pencils too hard?) so I could only get two layers, and they weren't dark enough. (I think pastels would have made this a whole different exercise...)

Also, the teacher used a profile of a guy with a big cloud of curly hair and a beard and mustache, which provided lots of room for "squiggles" in the final drawing, while I short-sightedly chose this girl with a crown of braids, which are quite defined.

After the transfer, I went back and put a drawing over the top. It's too tight and precise for it to satisfy the objective of this lesson, and doesn't have the beautiful graduated shadows and light that the monoprint should have given. It basically looks like a smudgy, not-very-good portrait drawn in Conté pencil and finger-smudged. (And the only smooth watercolor paper I had was toned tan.)

Oh, well. I will try this again at the end of the month when my printer is up and running. But thanks, Juna, for the lesson!

Pencil, Conté pencil, CarbOthello pencil, and Stabilo All on 184-lb. toned tan mixed media paper, 7.5x10.5 inches.

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).