As I said yesterday, this man caught my eye at a watercolor society meeting several years ago and I asked him if I could take his picture. I dug him out of my files of interesting faces, drew him up and took him to class. I like my start. Let's see if I like my ending on Thursday in the class at the Huntington Library that's being taught by Rob Sharrill. Class got me back to painting.
And then as I upload these pictures, I see my first big mistake. The hat is much, much bigger, taller than the head and I didn't catch that at all. So a redrawing is in order before Thursday's class.
Darn, I liked the drawing and liked the initial washes.
I'll finish him up but boy that hat is now so irritating to look at!
Drew the felon again. Made some comments as to my drawing - face too wide, chin too long.....but it was a class and I needed to paint him.
Here's the progression of paintings.....ending up in a vivid display of color - the class went on too long and I just kept adding color and color and color.
Started another drawing, another painting. I'll post that beginning in tomorrow's blog. It's a painting of a man that's a member of the Verdugo Hills Watercolor Society. He was at a meeting several years ago with his wife and I asked if I could take his picture. I like very much the way the drawing came together and the initial washes of color. Let's see where I can take him to make him way, way too colorful.
Tore this photo out of the newspaper. Couldn't believe this cherubic face was wanted by the police but then Karin Jurick (one of my most favorite portrait/anything painters) paints from mug shot files on the internet. She never names them or says where they're incarcerated, but she always has faces to paint!
When you photograph the "real" person and then photograph the painted person, the errors are glaring. But......this is the first painting in 4 years so gimme a little break. I didn't think it was all that bad and as a result, I'll go to class again this week - perhaps with this character redrawn and ready to paint again.
Many years ago, maybe 6, maybe 5, I followed a blog by a woman named Karin Jurick. She posted portraits (photos) once a week for all of us followers to paint. We submitted our paintings to her via email and she posted them for all of us to study. It was a monumental effort on her part, very time consuming, but oh so wonderful for those of us struggling to learn the face. I was so taken with her generosity that unbeknownst to her, I captured the names and emails of the participants and wrote them on the side asking them to take part in a huge thank you to her. I sent everyone whose name I could find a copy of Karin's picture asking them to paint her, send me an email photo and I would post them all at once in a huge thank you to Karin. All went well, until (you can see this coming), someone wrote Karin saying when should she send her the portrait she had painted. The jig was up which was too bad but the project turned out wonderfully. I'm wondering if I have any of those portrait posts still available.
What started this letter to all of you today? Karin Jurick has started posting, blogging, once again and I'm hooked all over again. She paints small: 4x6, maybe an 8x10 if she's feeling adventurous. She only uses flat brushes and look what she accomplishes.
I took a look at her blog and I'll be darned. There is one of her final portrait posts. She had all of us who had painted along with her send her a "selfie". She then swapped/emailed us someone else's selfie. We were told to paint the stranger (who was painting us) and return our painting via email. I was sent a fabulous photo of what I termed the "hairdresser". Wonderful colorful picture. Alas, the hairdresser never got her act together by the deadline but Karin, wonderful manager, filled the blank spot by painting me!! You'll have to guess which one.
This man is in Spokane. How lucky people are to have access to him and to his teachings. The best part of this video, in my opinion, is his involvement in a local junior high school as a volunteer art teacher. When he speaks about art in our lives, in our childrens' lives, he waxes eloquent and true.
This man demonstrates using color value not necessarily color. It's really interesting and something that we all should have learned years ago and didn't. I know I struggled for a long, long time as to what "value" meant - I held up the grey scale, I held up the camera slide, I nodded my head when the teacher mentioned "value"......I think I'm beginning to understand and it's only been a gazillion years.
This is the same Sheldon School of Painting in Los Angeles. This man works with high school students who want to study art, who want to prepare a portfolio for an art degree somewhere.....he has videos of painting in every medium and every subject. His oil technique is much like water in that great expanses of color are never laid down, dabs here, dabs there and the eye emerges.
Having just taken up a paintbrush again for the first time in 4 years....I've spent this Friday morning watching videos of other watercolor portrait painters, trying to get that "feeling" back again and yes, definitely, a lot, lot, lot of technique!
Enjoy this first video by Stephie Butler.
