I can't quit you!

 I don't seem to be able to leave the Florence Lee lesson behind and move on. I am fascinated by the concept/effect of the ground as part of the picture. So I did another one.

I really struggled with her. First of all, after I drew it, smudged it, and used fixer on it, I realized that the eyes were too far apart, so I ended up having to paint over the eyes and one side of the face so I could move them inwards. I ran out of charcoal, so I did it in Stabilo All, and I should have fixed it again before painting, but I was too impatient and it was 9:00 at night and dark out on the patio where I had the spray fixative station set up, so I just went ahead, with the result that I smeared the pencil into the paint in a bunch of places that I then had to go over a few times.

Then, I couldn't find the one color of paint that I really wanted to use on this painting for the lights (Titan Mars Pale). I knew I had bought a tube a few months ago, but it wasn't in my paintbox, so I ended up mixing some pinks that were okay but not as satisfactory.

I worked on the painting for a couple of hours and decided it was done, but when I propped it up to look at it I realized that when I redrew the eyes I had placed one slightly too high, so then I had to tweak that. Since I had to fix that, I did a more thorough search and found my Titan Mars in another box of paints, so I decided to go back in and do a few more brights. Florence's paintings are so much more "painterly" than are mine—I get too obsessed with smoothing and blending, but I love her chunky placement of highlights and incomplete hair. So I tried to introduce a few more random strokes. And oh, that hand....

I'm calling her "Jungle Red," although the red of the nails didn't come out quite so bright with the damn Stabilo All pencil blended into them. Some people will recognize the reference.

"Jungle Red"—clear gesso, acrylic paints, charcoal, fixative, Stabilo All, on thin birch board, 11x14 inches.

Another Florence Lee

 I wanted to do another painting in the Florence Lee "method," and today was the day. I decided I wanted to do a horizontal rather than a vertical, just to mix things up, and found this reference photo I liked a lot, that included a hand for a little extra challenge. Plus, the hand is sort of stretching the woman's face out of shape where she leans on it, so that was fun too, to relocate the features to accommodate.

I am happy with this as a painting, but not so much as an example of Florence's method. I didn't stop to think that my base color, yellow ochre, was already one of the skin tones of this woman, so it doesn't have the same radical effect leaving the base color showing that it did when the background colors were blue or green. But I do like the technique of suggesting the hair and clothing while leaving some of the background in place instead of filling them in completely, so that worked.

It's a little over-painted in the face, because I didn't leave much of the pure yellow ochre. But like I said, I'm happy with the portrait.

"Jasmine"—gesso, charcoal, fixative, acrylic paints on thin birch board, 14x11 inches.

Mixed media with Joan

 This was a lesson on LFI2022 with Joan Martin. Her media was way more mixed than was mine, and her mark-making more experimental, incorporating a credit card and a chopstick! I simplified this one, and used the materials I had on hand. But it was fun to mess about.

I have to say this was one of the most challenging face angles ever, and I didn't entirely pull it off! And I even used a grid. Every once in a while there is a face that you look at, and you think you have it, and then you look back later and realize that one eye should be much higher, or the mouth is on the wrong slant, or the nose is too big, and this will definitely be one of them.

"Jocelyn"—gray-toned paper, gesso, Payne's Gray ink (and a little Prussian Blue), a Uniball pen, some Huhu markers, and a Signo white gel pen. Oh, and a dot stencil. On 9x12 Strathmore Toned Gray Mixed Media paper.

Another ground-based portrait

I was so fascinated by Florence Lee's lesson incorporating the ground color into the painting as an integral part of the skintones that I decided to try another one this week; and I have a third one I want to paint as well, though that one may take a back seat to a couple of other lessons I have missed.

If you are interested in the exact (and exacting) technique, you can scroll back one post and read all about it. I got caught up today and forgot to take process photos; but again, you can see some in my previous post.

This one wasn't quite as successful, I don't think, as my first one; and ironically I think that's because I painted last week's from a black and white photo, while this week's reference was in color. The black and white assisted me to not add too much color but only focus on the darks and lights, with a few accent colors for eyes, cheeks, and lips and some dramatic highlights. I love the photo I used this week, but the model has really specific skintones, and I found myself filling in too much instead of leaving things to be suggested, with the result that I actually had to go back and re-introduce the ground color into the nose, cheeks, and around the eyes, because I had painted too much of it out. The model's red hair also caused me to put too much detail into the hair instead of letting it be a suggestion, with the result that it feels a little fussy to me.

This is, again, gesso, charcoal, and acrylic paints on a birch board, 11x14 inches. "Redhead Bride" is her name.

Incorporating ground

 I can't believe I haven't made any art for more than two weeks, but...it's been a rather fraught 18 days, and between other responsibilities, health issues, and a darkling mood, well, it just didn't happen. I did start this project more than a week ago, but it required several steps with lengthy drying times in between, and I stalled out before making it past the first few.

This is a study utilizing a ground color (i.e., the background color) as an integral part of the painting, an interesting and unusual lesson from Let's Face It 2022 with Florence Lee, a creative and meticulous artist with a charmingly tiny voice who is truly beguiling (if methodically slow) in her process. So the first step was to get a birch board (I had ordered some and had them on hand, they are 11x14 and about 3/16th of an inch thick), coat it with clear gesso on both sides (doing the back as well prevents warping), and letting that dry; then we mixed up a ground color (a medium to dark blue made up of about five mixed colors), painted the entire board (being sure we mixed enough color to have some left over to use later), and let that dry.

I ended up correcting both the mouth
location and the jawline after this photo,
and also took out some of the shading.

Next, we sectioned off the board with a grid (using light charcoal) and did the same with our reference photo, to make it easier to reproduce the face on the board. I don't usually do this, since I have become increasingly accurate in my drawing, but since this face was larger than life, I decided to do so and it did make features much easier to locate in place. Then it was time to make the drawing, which was supposed to be mostly a basic line drawing using a dark charcoal. I went overboard with the shading, and had to use my ground color to remove some of it after.

As you can see, there is much smudging
to cover up with ground.

After the drawing was made, we took the board outdoors for ventilation, and sprayed it with either fixative or hairspray, using a finger to smudge in whatever areas we wished to either darken or soften. That had to dry, and then we had to fix the fix, so to speak, by coating the board once more with a coat of clear gesso.

Once the gesso was dry, the actual painting began. The first step was to study the painting and decide in what areas we wished to revert the image to the original color, taking out smudges both purposeful and inadvertent (somehow you just can't draw with charcoal without dragging your hand through it at some point). The next step was to mix some darks and paint in the most dramatic shadows and darker areas of the face. Then we went the opposite direction and put in the lightest lights, followed by all the medium tones, and once again correcting anything that didn't "fit" by either mixing in some ground color with it, or flat-out painting it back to the blue.

This was a really interesting, if time-consuming, process, and I like the resulting painting. Rather than using the reference photo provided, I decided to paint Mexican artist, poet, and model Carmen Mondragón (also known as Nahui Olin); you can see why she was in such demand as a model, with her sultry eyes and rather pouty expression. I painted her once before, but using a completely different palette of bright watercolors and incorporating wide eyes, a tinier mouth, and a cartoonish cat that mimicked her own painting style. I feel like I have made great progress in achieving likenesses in my portraits since then (a little more than a year ago). This was made a little more challenging because the photo was black and white, so I had to decide on the colors without reference, knowing only that her eyes were green, and that her hair varied between blonde, red, and brunette!

I will probably try this method again—Flo stood for part of her lesson in front of a wall of paintings she had done in this manner, using various color grounds along with a variety of darker or lighter faces, and they are all beautiful and so different—I especially love the splash of highlights on the dark ground. It has a lot of potential and is inspiring as well, although a lot slower work than I usually enjoy.

"Carmen M."—gesso, acrylics, and charcoal on birch board, 11x14 inches.

Details, details

After I painted the stencil accents onto my "Akata Witch" portrait the other day, I took the leftover acrylic paint and made a particularly vibrant background for another portrait. So today, it was time to paint something in acrylic. I thought about another book character, but instead settled on that book's author, Nnedi Okorafor, as my subject. She is a genial-looking woman with some super wild hair, and I thought it would be fun to immortalize her alongside her character, Sunny Nwazue.

I found a photo in which I particularly liked her expression, but her hair was down, and the top of her head had been cropped off. Since her characteristic hairdo is with her hair up in a giant twisty beehive, I looked for and found another photo with that hairstyle in which she was holding her head at almost the same angle, and then used the face from the former and the hair from the latter to make what I wanted.

Many people who paint in acrylic don't start with a drawing, like watercolor painters mostly do; since the medium is opaque, you end up painting over a lot of the lines of your drawing as you go along. But I still like to start with a drawing, even if I do have to paint over some of it, just to have a general idea of where I'm going.

I worked hard on this portrait all morning and part of the afternoon; the skin tones and shadows were challenging, as was the 3/4 pose, and I wanted to get it just right. Finally, after a million small tweaks, I decided I was done...but somehow she just didn't look right. I kept looking at the photos: Did I get the angle of the eyes wrong? Are the features too small for the head? Is the body too big for the head? Is it the hairline? I couldn't figure it out. I was about to ball up and throw away the palette page with all my leftover paint on it, when it suddenly came to me: In painting her skin, I had covered over the lines for her eyebrows, and never put them back in! And with a couple of strokes, her whole face came into focus and looked like the person I was painting. Who knew that eyebrows were so crucial to personality?

This is "Nnedi Okorafor"—acrylic paints, stencil, gesso, spray paint, pencil, Stabilo, on 140-lb. Fluid coldpress watercolor paper, approximately 12x16 inches.

Book illustration

At 2:30 this morning, when it was obvious I wasn't going to sleep, I decided to get up and paint. I had just finished the young adult book Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor, and had an idea to paint a portrait featuring its protagonist, Sunny.

Sunny is a black girl who is albino, and I loved the challenge of achieving that look, with the pale, delicate layers of skin tones. There was a lot going on in the book, and I decided to paint some stuff in the background as "symbolism"—some chili peppers, some morning glories, and Sunny's juju knife with a green blade. Unfortunately, neither the layout nor the rendering of the objects was pleasing, and I ended up three hours later with a figure I loved and a background I hated.

I decided to cover the background with a layer of pale gray gesso, and the portrait looked so much better without the distraction of all the dark, obtrusive junk in the background, but then it felt a little plain. So I pulled colors from her face and hair to do a stencil pattern in acrylics over the gesso, then painted a thin layer of white paint over the top of those, once they were dry, to knock them back a little so that they were an interesting feature but didn't take away from the face. I think it works...? This all took another hour or two, with the result that no sleep was achieved! Maybe a nap is in order, after breakfast.

Here is "Akata Witch"—pencil, watercolors, gesso, acrylic paint, on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper. It's about 13 inches wide and about 11.5 inches tall.