This week's entry will be pretty short. I don't have a lot to show for the time and I don't have much to rant on about like usual. Instead I figured I'd just show some before and after shots to illustrate some more of the process.
In fact, of the two paintings I'll include with this post, the really interesting one is the one of the dude with the big afro. The girl is fine as well, but there's less going on with that painting. It's actually a good thing because it meant there was less of a challenge to get to the end result, while the dude took a bit more effort.
The first version of the painting cracks me up because it looks so silly, but that's kind of how every one of these portraits looks at some point in the process. The basic flow with this series is to paint some flat colours at first, just to get the shapes right. It actually takes me a little bit of back and forth to get the initial blocks done and in just about the right place.
Then it's all about filling in details on top of the flat colour blocks, but before that I need to get the eyes in place, which is kind of funny. The idea is that I try and paint in the eyes early, so that I can later spend some time shaping them and adding details like eyelids and pupils. So early on, the eys always look way too big and hilarious.
Not to mention the other little sketching that takes place to outline a rough idea of where the nose, mouth, chin, and other features will end up. This isn't anything special when it comes to painting, as I'm sure everyone does a variation of this at some point. After all, the real fun with pain is that you can cover up just about anything you've done to get you to the end.
The other thing I've learned while painting faces with darker skin colours, is that dark paint is harder to photograph than lighter paint. It's no doubt because I'm not a very good photographer and I don't spend a lot of time taking photos of my paintings. Having said that though, I actaully do try and avoid as much shine and glare as I can when I'm taking photos of my work, if only to reproduce something that looks as close to the original as possible.
Except dark colours show up the shine way more than others, simply because any reflection caused by the acrylic has less to blend in with. As it is I worry that when a dark painting is hanging on a wall, it will pick up every little glare and never be completely visible thanks to these reflections.
I'm sure there are ways around it that involve proper lighting and camera skills, but at the same time I don't consider it to be any of my concern. I'd rather stick to painting pretty pictures than try and cover all the bases.
Anyway, that ended up being longer than I expected, so hooray for that. Hopefully I'll have some more to show next week, but for now this is where we are… and wherever you go, there you are.