[Co] Mission Accomplished!

It is finished! (and no, I am not quoting Jesus here, although we are going to be celebrating the most poignant time these three words have ever been stated coming up this next month, hooray!)

This portrait, this commission, is complete, and it's time to document, varnish, and send this baby. I wanted to share one last look at the portrait and also give you a few detail photos to so you can really see what's going on.

You know, I have always found it funny that when you work on someone's portrait, especially for hours, it feels like you have been spending time with the person, just hanging out. E and I have now been hanging out for some time; this portrait was completed in just over 18 hours. Now, depending on my relationship with the client, and their relationship with the subject, I may or may not come into contact with the person I paint ever again. In this case, I know I will. And every time it happens, when I see them for the first time after painting or drawing them, there is a little bit of an awkward moment in my head because I feel like I have memories with this person that I know they don't have. Not only that, I have studied all the lines in their face, the curves of their eyelids, the structure of their nose, for so long, I feel like I've been staring at them and that somehow they know it, so it makes me want to avert my eyes like I've been caught. 

Since I last posted, I have completed his left forearm and hand (to the viewer's right), fixed his hair, messed with the foliage in the background a little, and painted in his shirt.

Here's a detail of his head and face. The difficulty here was to get his eye sockets to stay very dark while maintaining some detail in his eyes. Teeth are always very difficult, especially to get their shape  correct to the individual. The other most challenging part of his head was his hair. As long as I've known E, he has had ever growing and ever changing hair. It's one of his most stand out features. Currently he is sporting a short cut an a mustache. Other times he's had long curly locks. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

His left hand and forearm. As I stated in my last post, his shirt reflects onto his forearm a different highlight color from the natural highlight on the other side. Look for these things when you are painting or drawing. Where is the light source? What is casting a shadow on what? What is reflecting on what? How does that affect it? Is there a red balloon casting a red reflection onto someone's shirt? You know what I'm trying to say. 

His right forearm and hand. This is probably the strangest positioned hand I have yet to draw or paint.  But what can you do? He's obviously trying to hold and support the fish, and doing a very efficient job at it. The shapes created are so unusual. And the fact that his wrist, which you might normally think is the thinnest part of the arm, gets thicker where the muscle contorts to twist at an angle. If you ever hear me say, "Draw what you see, not what you think you see" it is because of these very things. If you get too caught up making it "look like a hand", it may look less like a hand than if you just trusted the weird shapes you saw. Painting and drawing are really exercises in being able to compare things (which is darker, which is larger, this is twice the size of that, etc) and being a detective (Where is this weird color coming from? Is it a reflection? Maybe on the other side of that object, out of view, there is...). Then you take the information you discover and translate it to the page or canvas.

The background foliage. Depending on the painting you are doing, the background gets more or less attention and detail. Here I wanted to be able to distinguish a difference in plants through their colors an textures, and to make them dimensional, but that's about it.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing the process of this portrait. Leave me some feedback if you would. also, you can subscribe through email above. Note: if you tried to subscribe previously and it did not work, please try again. I believe we fixed the glitch. 

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Painting a Wet Fish

The last fish I think I have drawn that wasn't for a logo was probably this pen and ink drawing from high school:

This fish, however, is not only in color, but because it is out of water, it's wet and slimy. To capture the reflective quality of the wet scales, I've found that it's important to maintain good contrast.

Here is the fish in my newest painting:

Stay tuned if you'd like to see how this portrait wraps up. 

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Newest Commission

My newest commission is of a man and a fish. I haven't painted many fish before, so I'm interested to see how it goes. It's a beautiful fish, and of high importance in this painting, so I want it to look as slimy as it really is. Wish me luck!

First things first. I drew my initial sketch–these sketches always look weird, and I've had to learn to trust my instincts and that it will eventually look right. The lines locate boundaries, and do not represent the tone within the boundaries, which means they never allowing the initial sketch to look much like the person. For instance, without darkening the eyes, he looks very odd. For this sketch in particular, his hands were the odd part. A cocked wrist and turned fingers plus the foreshortening of the arms made for a funny initial sketch.

You can see that I divided my canvas into 16 sections. I use these as reference lines to get the proportions right. 

When I begin painting, I almost always start by adding the darks, or at least the darkest shade in each area. I'm just trying to lay down a foundation. After this dries, I'll do some pushing and pulling on top. The hardest part of the whole process for me, is staring at white canvas. His shirt is white in this painting, so I'll leave it exposed for now (so I don't mess it up as I go), but for the most part, I like to fill the canvas with paint as soon as possible.

Just filling the canvas with general color areas. I like to work from loose to tight, and oil paints lend themselves to that nicely. 

Again, basic color areas. Faces get a little more attention in this "basic color" stage, just because I don't want to lose the boundary lines I drew in my initial sketch. 

More to come with this painting. Stay tuned.

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