Phew!

This portrait is of Rajashree Raghavendra, and is for the Different Strokes for Different Folks (DSFDF) painting challenge blog that Karin Jurick hosts. It’s a lot of fun and very challenging and, for me, can be pretty stressful. She painted me.

By the way, I should say that, yes, I am available for commissions if you so happen to see this painting and think you’d like to have one done for you or a loved one. Or a despised one; makes no diff to me.

I was going to take a bunch of pictures as I went through the process but I got sucked into the painting and next thing you know, it’s 10:40pm and the wife is headin’ off to bed and I’ve still got at least an hour of work to do.

Here’s the reference photo and my painting. Please note that I tweaked the ref photo for brightness and contrast and saturation a bit. It was dark when I got it. Also note that my painting was photographed in my kitchen under fluorescent lights (it is just about midnight so I’ll have to get the full sunlit painting tomorrow, hoping the weather permits) so it’s not really representative of the work (it’s brighter than this). Edit: got a picture outside – it’s overcast but the colors are definitely coser to reality. Not exactly, but pretty close.

Okay, okay, enough blathering, here’s the process for this painting:

• Started with drawing in graphite pencil, made it permanent with fixative
• Came in with the gray background and outlined the face and laid in the major landmarks
• Came in with darkest darks (always scary at this point!)
• tried mixing up the darkest flesh tones – took me probably 5 puddles of paint before I got color/value I liked
• laid in the dark flesh tones, followed by the mids, and came back through with the lights (bright yellow, not pure white)
• Worried over the mouth. I ended up getting it pretty good. Note: I don’t paint teeth. I paint a grayish yellow area with a darker shadow and a black line at the top
• Freaked out over the eyes, so I blobbed some black outlines, black pupils, and dark gray “whites” to set it in. Left it at that for a while
• Came back through to get the reflected lights. Could have done better on the nose but the paint wasn’t agreeing with me. I need better brushes.
• Scarf/hair laid in
• Used a palette knife (the sharp edge) to scratch in some gray hairs. Sorry, Raja, but they’re there so I put ‘em in!
• Re-did the glasses shadow like 4 times. It’s a purplish pink flesh tone and was hard to get. I ended up adding some Burnt Sienna to get it to look right in the painting
• Worked on the eyes like a freak
• Decided to go with an “unfinished” look. I like that look. Also wanted to include some blue in the shirt for unity (there’s blue in the hair and a touch of green in some of the flesh to “gray” out the red)
• The part in the hair gave me some trouble but I think I nailed it
• Finished the eyes. Again.
• Came through with some highlights and a smaller brush
• More eye work
• Used the palette knife to suggest glasses rims – a black line and a gray line, top and bottom
• MORE eye work – reworked most of the eyes and liked them better
• Reworked the neck to make it darker and to add the single brush stroke for the entire lit side (I like when I can get something done in a single stroke… of course, it took like 8 strokes before that one to get the right color/tone)
• Finishing touches, ensuring I didn’t miss anything
• Finished up eyes with highlights on lower lids and “alive” highlight on pupil
• Put the earrings in (they’re grey, believe it or not)
• Done!

I know I’ve said it, but I’ll say it again: sometimes you HAVE TO break the toy. You must. You can’t help it. You just gotta. It’s like throwing your keys down a storm drain and not being able to get them back again. You get the urge that most people resist. But not you. Oh, no, not you. You dirty bitch.

Taking chances on a painting can be awkward. Sometimes you make total crap. I mean total, fuck me I can’t believe I call myself an artist, crap. Crapola. Shitty shitty bang bang.

Sometimes, though, it just works. Like this painting. I was going to call this something else, but the painting, as is their wont, spoke to me as I painted it. It told me that I was on the wrong path, it whispered, “A little dab of light here, a subtle variation in shadow here… now BREAK IT, bwa ha ha.” Yes, it gave me the bwa ha ha evil laugh. I swear. You’da heard it if you was here, I tells ya.

You’re never gone, are you? Sometimes you just hide. In the shadows. And most people never look. You’re a crafty little demon! Ah, but you’re not going to get away with it this time. I’m gonna look. I’m a gonna stare ya down. I’m gonna grab on with a Chuck Norris fucking death grip and not let go. I’m gonna go where others dare not.

I’m gonna see it. You. Me. Hidden. In the shadows. Because I dared to look. Come, hold my hand as I swan dive over the edge, into the abyss!

(I painted this alla prima… then I came back with a brush full of thinner and smeared the crap out of it. Then I refined some more. Then I took a 2″ brush and splashed red all over… then I took that brush, dipped it in thinner, and whipped thinner at the canvas repeatedly… then I painted back in some parts… then I used a small brush and whipped thinner at the canvas a few more times. I was having too much fun. If that’s possible. BTW, I fucking LOVE this painting. I’m considering labeling it NFS)

November is Art Every Day Month. Okay, it’s not some real holiday or anything, and you won’t find it on any calendar or as an Outlook add-in. But I’m really going to give it a go this month. Something – ANYTHING – done, every day. Progress on a piece, painting, doodling, crafting spitball sculptures, whatever.

This particular drawing is on canvas and is prep work for the Different Strokes for Different Folks entry. It’ll be my third piece that I’ve entered to be displayed on Karin’s site. It’s actually sort of nerve-racking to put yourself out there like that, especially with so many great interpretations. But it’s also inspiring – your take is your take, how YOU see it, not how it is to anyone else.

As you can see, I did a grid this time. I was enlarging from a really bad printout, but that’s okay because I’m not concerned with much, just the outline. I could have free-hand drawn everything but the grid saves me some time. It’s nearly 11:30pm and I’ve got to get up before 6am and get ready for work, you know. One day this will be my full-time gig. Until then, grids are my friend. Well, maybe they still will be because I *have* learned to draw and to see but that’s not what I’m after here.

I’m calling this one, “Lost,” because it’s an image of 3 travelers, together but alone. Shadows touching without knowing. Each with their own thoughts that probably are more similar than we’ll ever know. Just being the busy little ants that we are. Where are they going? They don’t know, they’re lost in the continuum. Time-space is a void and they’re just along for the ride. They don’t know where they are or where they’ll end up. They’re lost. Aren’t we all?

My second official (but fourth, actually) Different Strokes from Different Folks picture. I was actually more than a little reluctant to do this one and waited a bit on it. In the end, though, I’m glad I did it. As always, I learned quite a bit from it.

I painted over a few parts because those muddy yellows and distant bluish colors were challenging to get just right. I thought about tossing all realism out the window and going for a completely abstract piece, as many others have done, but I wanted to try a few challenges.

First, I switched Burnt Sienna for Burnt Umber. I’m glad I did – I think I got some better grays and I think it interacted better with yellow. My palette is now down to Titanium White, Yellow Lemon, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, and Burnt Umber. Just 5 colors (well, technically 4 colors + white). I can get a lot of mileage out of that palette, I think.

Second, I wanted to go a little thinner on the paint, so I did.

Third, my underpainting was a heavily diluted yellow that I then blotted up with a paper towel. It was dry just about immediately. I did my drawing directly in super thinned Burnt Umber, closing one eye and using the paintbrush to measure it out. Burnt Umber, unlike Burnt Sienna, dried really quickly.

I’m very pleased with this painting. Again, not something I’d normally paint, but that’s half the point of doing the DSDF, right?!

Sometimes you have to push yourself. You have to push your style. So I pushed up to a larger canvas, a 9″ x 12″. I also tried a thin under-painting first. Finally, I went with a really, really dark background that I prepared about a week ago instead of freshly prepared. Oh, wait, one more thing – I wanted to use as little linseed oil as possible and go with turp instead.

Here’s the source image. It’s an older one from the “Different Strokes from Different Folks” biweekly challenge blog. I’m just getting back into painting and I need to explore, so this works great for me.

Here’s my painting (still on the easel, drying):

"Solitude and Sunlight," 9" x 12", oil on canvas board

So how did I do? Well, I did do the larger canvas. I did the under-painting with turp and no linseed oil. I did find that the thicker paint that I like to use to show my brush strokes didn’t work well with thin paint or paint straight out of the tube. So I got out the linseed oil and used it for the thick, top layer.

I don’t know what this man is waiting for, but he was a challenge. I struggled at first until I put away the number 2 brush and whipped out the larger brush and forced myself to stick with it the rest of the painting. I’m getting better at thick-over-thick where I need it. And I’m growing exceedingly fond of an impasto style for the lightest lights.

They say that tomorrow never comes. If it does, I’ll paint another and this time, maybe, just maybe, I’ll take pictures along the way to show my blunders, reworks, sticking points, and breakthroughs.

"Three Wayward," 5"x7", oil on canvas board

My third painting, so, yeah, I guess this is apropos. But I had ulterior motives.

Three figures, three shadows draping the sidewalk as the figures silently wait, three strangers sharing an unspoken moment. Three places to go, three ideas of what’s right and wrong; three together, three alone.

I liked the cast shadows. I felt like I was asking these three where they were going. Three strangers whose shadows touched for a moment. While they waited at the light, three shadows became fast friends and savored their chance encounter.

Contrasts. They’re fun literally and figuratively.

Painting challenges can be fun. They can also be frustrating. I scraped the canvas twice with this one before I finally stopped trying to get details and let the paint flow where it wanted to flow.

Sometimes you have to do that. Listen to the painting. Sometimes you have a plan, a mental image you’re striving for. Sometimes you get close to that goal, sometimes the picture takes you for a ride.

This persnickety little cupcake took me for a ride. Then it kicked my shin and spat in my eye for good measure.

In the end, though, I won. And so here you have “Tenacity.” My second painting. Let’s see how far tenacity carries me.