Repainted Face

I have repainted the face on my son's portrait. It took several sessions to get the hang of where I was going, but it is done. It is a little more stylized than it was originally but is more structural and gives more information about the spatial contours. This has been a very good exercise for me in painting technique and style preference. I have lots of ideas about how I personalize my work, but not all of them can work in one painting and not all of them will work to personalize my work because each painting would be too different from one to the next. I found that if I make the paint the consistency of cream by adding just enough thinner, it makes a surface quality on the canvas that I like and gives me quite a bit of control when blending on the palette and on the canvas. I find if I work to thickly, I lose control of the blending, and if I work too thinly, there isn't enough paint on the canvas to mix well. I am happy with the results of this version of the face, except for some small details, which I will very carefully adjust. I have to say that the version I destroyed, I liked a bit better. I have now learned my lesson about protecting the work you have done by working very carefully and slowly on small adjustment. With this version I can see that I need to adjust slightly for my natural skew. Everyone skews slightly when painting/drawing. I had read a description lately of John Singer Sargent’s head painting class as written by one of his students. He talks about his (J.S.S.'s) tendency to skew also. I just thought it was me. The quickest way to adjust for skewing is to use a mirror. The distortion will jump out at you. I also take the images in photo shop and flop the image. You can play with the distort image tool to correct for the skew. This gives an idea of the degree of skewing in your drawing. Here is the face I painted flopped. The distortion obvious to me, when I do that, especially around the base of the nose and the shape of the head. I wonder whether different people skew in opposite directions depending if they are left or right handed or read right to left like Arabic or Hebrew, or maybe it is just random. It is kind of like when you see a photo of yourself and it looks wrong because you are used to seeing the asymmetry in your face one way. When you see it as other see you and not the reflection, it seems awkward.

The Art Print Business

I had made a decision to focus on developing as an artist and not to worry about marketing my work for the time being. Well that decision is being challenged at the moment. A local printer has offered to print posters of my work and a set of note cards for promotion at an open house event that they are putting on. They can’t give me a usage fee for the images but they can print additional ones so that I have poster/cards to promote myself or to sell. Now all of a sudden I have to figure out if I am going to do a limited edition print or a low-end print and what stores in the area will purchase my sets of gift cards. I had thought about printing pieces to sell retail a few years back but didn’t like the risk involved in the layout for printing cost. Now I am being offered to give it a try for free. Not a bad deal. It is enticing enough to give it a go. There is no downside except the time I invest in figuring it out, instead of working on a painting. The piece that I am thinking about for the poster is of a local gardens and I have already contacted the community association to see if their residence would be interested in a limited edition poster. I could try to sell 20 posters for $200 each, 100 posters for $40 each or 400 posters for $10 each. It is a tough thing to figure out the best way to work the market. It sounds like a tough proposition on any of the options. I am thinking about a split run between a limited addition and a low-end piece so that I can work both markets at the same time. We'll see how it works.

BEFORE

AFTER
I couldn't help myself. I made a few adjust to the face and ruined it.I liked it the way it was before I made the adjustment. I went too far to repaint it back so I wiped the whole thing down with Gamsol. It looked terrible, but at least I could see where the old strokes were. It made me realize how Rembrandt worked. He would build up texture, wait for it to dry and then rub darker stain into the crevices. That is great when you want that effect, but I was looking for something more Sargentesque, with cleaner brushstrokes. I should have left it where it was but live and learn. Since this is a learning piece for me, I feel like I can try something and start over if I need to. At least I have a good photo of where I was before, so I can sand down what I have to eliminate the paint build up, and copy what I had before. It won’t look exactly the same, but it will be a road map to get back to the same direction. Is anyone out there having similar battles, or is this my personal trial and tribulation? Anyway, I will let you know how it goes.

My Son's Portrait

I am currently working on my portrait skills, hopefully to win some commissions in the future. I am working initially from photos of family members and hopefully my wife will be able to sit for me when neither of us has to watch the kids. No luck yet, however. I don't know if this is the most efficient way of learning to produce portraits but I keep on painting over the work I have done until I am satisfied. I have repainted my sons face maybe 7 or 8 times. I will think that I am finished, then something will bother me about it, so I will end up making some subtle adjustments until I find I have repainted over the whole thing over. I have taken shots of various stages so that I have some record of whether the thing is getting better or worse. I hope when I actually have clients that it have refined this part of the process as not no look totally neurotic. Here is the painting as of last week.