Some Painting Progress - Beginning the Face

Got in some painting over the Christmas holiday days. Not a ton but began establishing the darks and lights in the face. I did go a bit further in the face, at this early stage, than was planned, but am happy with its beginnings.

Still the painting has a lot of the look of an under painting, but with a year and a bit to work on it still, it will go through a lot of transformation.

Bit of Painting in Today

Had to skip last weekend as I had some things to do and had a nice lunch out with a dear friend I don't see often.

Managed to get an hour and a bit in today. It will be the last I can do until after Christmas as I need to clear all my work stuff away for guests. It'll be nice having all the kids here and my Dad.

I needed to find some sort of basic reference for the menu as pretty much the whole thing was blown out in the way the phone camera handled the white of the menu, in the original photo. So, found a menu and had to take it into Photoshop and change the perspective plus do some blurring of it. I have it roughed in. It may change later on, depending on what the surrounding elements do to its values once they are more complete. One thing that will be difficult to work out just from my head is the reflections or any shadows below the hand and fingers, on the menu, as her hand in the original shot was not there. A new reference image of my own hand on a reflective surface in the same lighting condition may need to be produced.

Bear with me with the not so fantastic cell phone pic of this weekend's progress :-) Cell phones have teeney tiny sensors and they tend to smooshy smooshy the image and have lots of noise..

More Portrait Progress

Had 2 days holidays left from this year's work holidays that I get. Got some painting in on my portrait on the one day, and am going to see the Turner show at the AGO the 2nd day, with my Dad and my hubby. Should be nice, I have not been to the Art Gallery in Toronto for a few years.

I bought a really nice size wide size 10 filbert brush at Curry's and I am happy to say I chose right! It is really working well for rubbing and blending my soft layered background shapes. So, I made some progress, albeit a small amount, in my background. I also widened her arm on our left, her right.

There is quite a long ways to go but so far I feel confident it will work out in the end to my liking, hopefully.

my palette laid out, ready to begin

Portrait Painting Progress

The last couple of weekends, I have gotten in 5 - 6 hours on my personal portrait of my daughter. It's slow going but I feel happy painting again.

There are some issues with the arm on viewer left, which I will need to solve still.

The biggest obstacle I am facing is I do not really have a work space, a studio space if you will. I have been basically sitting on the floor but this does not allow for comfort, sitting cross legged on my pillow on the floor of the living room. I don't have the painting up high enough to work on the bottom of it. To sit at my drafting table, I would need to angle my board at such an angle that I cannot put my paints, my plate that I use for a palette, nor my mug that I have water in to rinse brushes. I used to have wire coat hangers bent in a way that I could hang my canvas off them from the top edge of my board, but I'm unsure where they are since having moved a few years ago. New ones would need to be made.

In any event, it so far is going ok. Background will be what I work on for a while. Though, always, I stray.

Sometimes a colour I mix for one area, intended for a different part of the painting all together I end up by instinct using it in the skin, and it tends to always work. I feel that this happens, especially with neutrals, because we tend to Think we know what pigments should work to mix skin tones and hone in on those, when really, skin tones have way more neutrals in them than we think. Therefore, when Not intending the colour I mix to be for the body, I end up mixing something that just Works. But I know I do this, from so many portraits in the past, so I in a way now lead myself down this same very path every time intentionally :-) Mix my background colours and neutrals, mix my hair neutrals, and voila, use them in the skin too.

The canvas I used to buy, from Curry's, I could no longer find after a while, one where I could rub such a soft layering of velvety dry brush blending with colour over colour. This canvas I can purchase now does not have quite that finish on it so I've had to adapt to the difference.

It will be a long go, probably over a year, but I am happy so far with the beginning progress stage.