Gary in Bath is as done as it is going to get.
From photo:
… to this:
… then this:
… and I’m stopping at this:
I’m done because it’s going backward, and the glasses are all wrong now, and the lenses are two different sizes and yes, it’s time for this one to just stop. Not a good experience. Instead of Gary making a humorous face next to a statue with a funny mouth, it’s Gary with dead eyes next to a demon in Hell. I could chalk that one up as a study, and try again, but I don’t think I will. Portraits are hard, and not satisfying at all.
6 responses to “Bath Face Done”
I bet that eventually portraits will work fine after more practice with painting, possibly especially with painting scenes that include semi-amorphous non-person things (like crumpled napkins – things that aren’t all “clean” edges and sharp shapes but instead have at least some of the aggravating properties of human faces). But until then, yes, just frustrating. Hopefully Gary has a good sense of humor about his eyes and, uh, proximate acquaintances? 🙂
KC – I always have trouble painting the faces of people I love. I tend to exaggerate their good features and over-correct the bad. Perhaps a stranger’s portrait next? And mostly, my painting problems come down to skewed drawings beneath the paintings. I think the next thing will be some blurry plants from a friend’s photo.
Yeah, while investment in the subject can help maintain interest, it doesn’t help with the technical side At All. But: more experience will move you further along.
And yay for plants! (I am very fond of plants.)
Would it be Unacceptable Cheating to zoom-and-print a photo-of-loved-ones (presumably greyscale and laser-printed so you don’t get ink dissolving into your paints) and then paint over it? Definitely not the same as starting from a sketch, but it might boost you over some speedbumps, which might give you the tools to get over others…
KC – I feel it would not be cricket. However, I have been known to print a black and white copy, cut out the major shapes, and then lay each shape over my finished interpretation of it to see where I went wrong. I didn’t do that with this one. Perhaps given a few days I might do that.
Yep, the difference between This Painting Is A Strength-Building Exercise (with the awkwardness/not-cricket-ness of people not *knowing* that and hence thinking the outcome is something it isn’t, auuugh) vs. This Painting Is A From-Scratch Art Piece. and that’s clever, cutting out shapes to figure out where things diverged! I was familiar with the “when copying a picture or painting, after you’re done, take a photo and layer it with the original at reduced opacity to see where the differences are” trick, but cutting out shapes would allow for more divergence from the original while still seeing how the essential bits compare…
KC – thanks, I just did that and man, the eyes are right but everything else skews from there. Don’t know if I want to fix what’s there or start over.