Afternoon play

Wanted to make some art today but didn't have anything special in mind, so I went browsing through photos I have saved in my reference folder and found one of the admin on a Facebook page to which I belong (Lymphedema Warriors). I loved the goofy wide-eyed stare and the wispy hair (although I didn't really do the hair justice). I did a quick double-line ink drawing freehand and then added watercolor. Took me about an hour or so. The right eye is a little too small for the rest of the face, and a little close in to the nose, but hey, freehand, people!

"Bec F."—Uniball pen and watercolors on 140-lb. coldpress, 9x12 inches.

New media

I am generally resistant to new media (and also old media!), preferring to hone my skills in my two preferred "genres," watercolor and acrylic. Even though I can do stuff with pencil, charcoal, markers, or what-have-you, I'm not a fan; I get impatient having to shade with a pencil using a tiny little point (or even the side of the lead) when I can do it in a few strokes with a paintbrush and enjoy the effect more. But after last week's Let's Face It assignment using pan pastels, I was persuaded by instructor Mika Denny's comment that likened using them with an applicator as closely akin to painting, and ordered some implements and a few colors to try.

The assignment called for a base of tinted paper, and I know I have some tan and maybe some gray Canson Mi-Teintes lying around somewhere, but it's at the bottom of an archaeological layer of art supplies, printer boxes, and books, and there is a slim chance of finding it without more work than I wanted to put in, so instead I started by coating a piece of watercolor paper with a thin transparent wash of Payne's Gray to serve as my base, and messed about on social media while letting it dry. Unfortunately, it dried so light that the white pan pastel didn't even show up against it, so I tried again using ultramarine. It kind of defeats the purpose of the black-white-gray dynamic that was intended, but I did feel like the blue went with my model's expression, so there's that.

The whites and lights showed up much better on the blue background, while still giving a subdued effect to this moody abstracted gaze that Christa Forrest was wearing while waiting for her taped demo to begin. Christa has been one of our instructors for multiple Let's Face It years, and I have actually painted her once before, but that was a bright, cheery watercolor using intense Daler Rowney inks, and I really wanted to try conveying a different mood this time with the pan pastels.

My finished product is not near as sophisticated, detailed, or precise as the one demonstrated by Mika. Although I ordered the pastels, the applicators, and the tips, I didn't get a blending stump, and the black and white charcoal pencils I used (because I already had them) are pretty soft and messy, so I couldn't get the fine details around the eyes that she achieved in her demo. There's also a weird thing going on with that shadow on the side of her face—I think I messed with it too much when I brought color into the face. But...now I can say that I gave the pan pastels a shot, and although it's probably not a medium I will use much, I can see the appeal, particularly the softness of blending you are able to achieve when using the applicators and sponge tips rather than just pencils.

Here's the finished product: Christa in pan pastels on a watercolor background, 12x9 inches on coldpress watercolor paper.

Expressions

I save photos that people post when they have interesting, difficult expressions on their faces, and eventually get around to drawing/painting them. This is one of our teachers for Let's Face It, Sabra Awlad Issa, who usually has a solemn, sort of deadpan expression, so when she posted this goofy face I knew I had to use it!

This is sort of a Deb Weiers production—I did the drawing first, in Uniball pen, and then washed it with two colors of Daler Rowney Acrylic inks, followed by a paint job with white gesso and watercolors, finishing up with white and gold pens for highlights and details on the glasses. I had fun.

"Sabra," 9x12 on 140-lb. coldpress.

Buddies

I did a little drawing and watercolor this morning, once again of my teacher and friend Emma Petitt, this time with Buddy, a dog she has fostered, going out of her way to find him the perfect home. The first placement didn't take, so Emma had him back to stay with her and her gang of dogs until the right adopter turned up, months later, never losing faith that Buddy would eventually land where he belongs. I wanted to capture the memory of her relationship with Buddy, because it was so sweet and loyal on both sides.

I loved the photo I used as a reference, although my drawing/painting doesn't quite capture the full wide side-eye gaze of Emma in the photo, so it's not quite as amusing. But I had fun and kept my hand in, and isn't that, if not the point, at least one of them?

Uniball pen and watercolors on 140-lb. coldpress, 9x12 (with a border).

Companion piece

Last week I painted Lynn Como's great-grandchild, Nerai. The reference photo included both her great-grandchildren, Nerai (two) and Evelyn (four) in it, but I wanted to paint large, and the biggest board I had was a 12x16, so I decided to just paint the little one. But after I finished it, I got to thinking that it would be fun to do a companion piece with Evelyn in it, reversing the colors (background and foreground) so they would go together but not be matchy-matchy. So yesterday I painted my board the light ultramarine color I used for Nerai's clothing, then did my pencil drawing, and today I painted Evelyn, changing her hat from the shocking pink in the photo to the peachy-pink color I used for the first painting's background, also drawing that color into the flower print of her dress, and using the same stencil for snow in the background to further unite them.

I was happier with the likeness I caught for Nerai than today's for Evelyn—try as I might, I couldn't quite get the eyes right, and hers are prettier—but over all, I was pretty happy with it. I think they would be fun to hang side by side in a floating frame.

"Snow Evelyn"—pencil, acrylics, and stencil on 12x12 thin birch board.

LFI 2024, Day One!

Starting a new year of portraits, with Kara Bullock Art School and the class Let's Face It 2024. This is year #3 for me with this class, and although I was MIA for about two-thirds of it this past year, it's still worth it to get 50 lessons for the year and be able to go back to them whenever I want.

Today's lesson was with Kara herself. I love the loose, painterly quality of her work, but have never been able to loosen up my hand and eye to quite that degree. But I'm going to call today's painting a win anyway, for several reasons. First of all, I did an underpainting and then did my sketch using a large paintbrush, instead of drawing out every last detail with a pencil, which is huge for me. And then I continued using one brush for almost the entire painting, although it wasn't quite as large as the one Kara used. My painting is much more blended than hers, and although I used most of her palette, I introduced a few colors to which I am partial (like Cobalt Violet and Titan Mars), and switched out her black for Payne's Gray, because I don't like the harshness of black. I also confess that I broke out a smaller brush to clean up a few edges, but not much!

Here's my sketch and underpainting in burnt umber fluid acrylic:

The model photo didn't have a name attached, so I'm going to call her "Tanya"—acrylics on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Decisions

My FB friend Lynn Como published a photo of her two great-grandkids posing for a picture by sticking their tongues out, and it inspired me to make a painting in which that stuck-out tongue made sense. I initially painted the child against the plain/stark peachy-pink/orange background, and I really liked the rather surreal way the figure popped against that non-background, but then I thought, Oh! The tongue could be sticking out to catch a snowflake! and did a search of my stencils for something that could stand in for snow. It was a big decision to invade that pristine field with the stencil images, though. These are flowers, but they were stylized enough to work, I think. (Do you?) (I hope Lynn will forgive me "borrowing" her great-grandchild's image!)

This was a fun one to paint, and surprisingly didn't take a whole lot of time. I just laid in the base colors, and then advanced pretty quickly to details.  Admittedly, I could have done a better job if I had painstakingly mimicked the knitting of the sweater and cap, but I chose to merely suggest some form to it and spend my time, instead, on the wonderful little face. The colors are so pure in children, and the peach background perfectly reflected the rather hectic color in the cheeks, brightened from being outdoors in the cold.

I'm trying to decide what to call it: Snow Day? First Snow? Taste the Weather? Or should I just call it by name (Nerai)?

For right now..."Snow"—pencil, acrylics, and stencil, painted on a 12x16-inch thin birch board.