Similar subject, new palette

It seems I wasn't done with my break from portraits (or so I thought), so on Wednesday I painted a new substrate on a birch board, on Thursday I stenciled it, and on Friday I glazed over that, and did the preliminary drawing of the still life I was going to paint. But in the process, something happened that caused me to create another work.

My new palette was primarily shades of pink, and as usual I squeezed out way too much paint for the job. My teacher Emma Petitt is always commanding, "Don't waste paint!" so after finishing my substrate, I pulled out a reference photo and some watercolor paper and used the pinks to paint the underlayer of a face. On Thursday there were some colors left over from the stenciling, so I used them to create a background behind the portrait. Today I glazed over that and squeezed out tiny dabs of the five colors I needed to complete the portrait, and here she is: Emma, being goofy!

"Goofy Emma"—Pencil, acrylics, and stencils, on coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

A break? or...

I have been painting portraits now for four years almost exclusively. In the first year or two I also kept up with other stuff, working in a sketchbook and doing illustration challenges (primarily food and urban sketching), but once I enrolled in Let's Face It in, what was it, 2021? I focused exclusively on portraits and didn't deviate.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when during the past two weeks I actually had more than a truncated impulse to paint something else. I started doing a substrate thinking it would be for a portrait, but found my inner vision picturing something else on the board, so I went looking for reference photos and made that happen.

The substrate evolved from lessons with Emma Petitt and Michael Carson—spreading around a group of somehow related colors and then stenciling over them. In this case, I chose colors that worked with my subject matter, then stenciled on top with contrasting colors, and then, after painting the picture itself, chose to almost obscure all the original background work with washes or glazes. Some of the shapes and images are still faintly there, and the mix of colors supports the primary colors of the picture, but without fighting for attention.

I was inspired to paint sunflowers by Russell, a new friend on Facebook who apparently grows a wide variety of them and posts daily pictures. So I went looking for a reference photo that would work with my already created background, and tried to keep the whole thing spontaneous and soft-looking like a Carson portrait.

This is "Vase of Sun," acrylics and stenciling on thin birch board, 12x16 inches. I don't know if it will be merely a break from painting portraits, or if I'm on a new tangent. We'll see!

Flapper anguish

My FB friend Dana has been posting a reference photo every month and challenging whoever is interested to paint it. I looked at this month's a few times, and every time I looked at that headdress I thought, Nope! But...I kept being drawn back to this photo, because what fascinated me was not the elaborate headdress but the look in her eyes and the exceedingly unkempt, worried eyebrows! It was such an anomaly, because she is dressed in this elaborate bejeweled dress, necklace, and tiara thingie, and has obviously taken some pains to wave her hair and apply makeup, and yet...those eyebrows! Maybe they just didn't pluck in those days? And the way she has them scrunched up gives her an air of anguish so at odds with the rest of her garb that it made me want to paint her.

I decided, therefore, to skip the headdress or whatever you would call it, and just give her a simple band that would hold back her hair but wouldn't distract from the expression on her face.

I was fairly happy with the face; but I made the dress too pale and the beads too dark, and then smudged them when I tried to muck with the necklace to de-emphasize its darkness, so this is a bit of a mess. But...it's been too many days since I painted, and I needed to fall back into it a bit, so Dana, here's what you get for August!

"Flapper Girl," pencil and watercolor on coldpress Fabriano, 9x12 inches.

Partner painting

I painted her, so of course I have to paint him! It was hard to find a photo of Governor Tim Walz without an open-mouthed toothy smile, but I finally managed to do so. I didn't want to have to do teeth again, after the Kamala portrait—the teeth were the biggest issue for many viewers, and I must admit that when you draw in pen, you still need to stop and think about suggesting rather than drawing every line, to get a better effect.

"Tim Walz" is drawn with Uniball pen and painted in watercolor on 140-lb. Fabriano coldpress, 9x12 inches.

Iconic women

Well, my villain didn't go over so well with the fan base, so I decided to paint someone that at least 60 percent of them would like a whole lot better.

I drew this freehand in pen, and it's not quite the perfect likeness I was attempting. Her face is a little longer than this, a little thinner, with a slightly higher forehead and a slightly longer chin. But I think I did capture a certain something about the smiling eyes and cheerful cheeks. The teeth? Not so much.

"Comma-La," Uniball pen and watercolor on Fabriano 140-lb. coldpress paper, 9.12 inches.

Villains

I had thought about painting a portrait of somebody pretty today (maybe Kamala?), but...somebody on one of the political pages I follow posted a collection of Trump's "guys" with a caption saying that they all look like Batman villains, and I found myself agreeing! So here is Roger Stone in his fedora and dark glasses, doing a very good impression of somebody of which Gotham City would like to be rid!

I got the glasses lenses a little bit too close together, so it made him more beady-eyed than he is in real life...but, villain!

"Batman Villain Stone"—Daler Rowney inks, Uniball pen, white gesso, watercolor, India ink, 9x12 inches on coldpress Fabriano watercolor paper.

Another mug shot

I wasn't going to paint today, but I couldn't resist this guy's baby face and black eye, so here he is. Same process as the previous two days. I like his pouty mouth and wacky hair.

"Baby Face"—pencil, Uniball pen, Daler Rowney inks, gesso, watercolor, on 9x12 coldpress Fabriano watercolor paper.