I’m way behind on this series of mini paintings, as week #6 just dropped on Friday. So, this is the week 4 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s based on a picture he took in the Canadian Rockies. To me it’s similar to week #1.
This was done on a 6×6 canvas panel. As with the other weeks, I used the 3 primaries, plus black and white.
This portrait is from a black and white reference photo that, unfortunately, I cannot remember where I downloaded it from — possibly from the curated Unsplash photos here. In any case, I actually drew this one out entirely by hand (in willow charcoal). Not sure why I chose a yellow ochre-clear gesso background, but I did.
I’m reasonably satisfied with this one — at least she looks fairly human. I can list at least half a dozen things I would want to do differently next time, but calling this done for now.
Today I got the email that Week 6’s cloud lesson is available… so I hustled to paint Week 4’s painting! So here is Week 4’s effort for Dianna Shyne’s “Cloud Challenge” at Acrylic University. The reference photo was for the setting sun’s rays breaking through the clouds. (I wish I could share, for comparison sake, but it’s a copyrighted photo by the artist.)
I’m getting behind on the cloud paintings, and remembering to post them! Here, for Week 3 of Dianna Shyne’s “Cloud Challenge” at Acrylic University, is my effort. The reference photo for this class was a sunset over a body of water.
This monochrome work is the painted sketch on 300-lb. watercolor paper which I already posted about. I used Anthraquinone Blue (PB60) aka Indanthrone Blue. It’s semi-transparent, which works well for the technique I was using: treating my acrylics more like watercolors.
The reference photo is by Ehsan Ahmadi on Unsplash.
The portrait comes from the week 43 exercise of Kara Bullock Art‘s Let’s Face It 2018 portrait art experience/class. While I am participating in the 2024 version, and (sort of) participated in the 2023 version, I bought the 2018 set of classes (52 weeks in all) last year. This was one that interested me.
I drew out most of the face last June with pencil, finished it earlier this week with willow charcoal and decided just to get it painted for the practice. (Even though I’m not crazy about parts of my drawing.)
Here’s the completed version, and below I have a set of photos of the in-between phases. (Too often we only see the final work people do, not the messy/ugly intermediate stages. 🙂 )
Here’s the in-progress stages. She looks more than a little sickly, and then I revised all the colors, not following the instructor at all.
The portrait lesson from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy is now complete. If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t use the Opera Rose/Raw Sienna mixture. I’d go with a pale umber or a light yellow ochre. Or even just a plain white canvas! Anyway, I am mostly satisfied with it — the eyes are better than I’ve done before!
I skipped a lot of the blue and the white highlights the teacher used in the online class; the red background of my canvas made it look like she had red highlights in her hair (as opposed to the black tresses the actual model has in the photo reference used.)
This work-in-progress is again from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy. I am doing this one in acrylic on a 8×10 canvas. The background is a mix of Opera Rose (Winsor & Newton Galeria) which is a garish bubble gum pink and Raw Sienna. The face was drawn on to the painted canvas, and I’ve done the first layer in Burnt Umber (following along).
BetterLateThanNeverArt 