I love doing portraits. I finished this one last night and delivered it this morning. The subject is a woman who died two weeks ago.
You’ll see my technique — I first look for shapes of values or colors and draw them in. Next I fill in the darkest values, then I do the lightest ones. Finally I fill in the medium values. The shadows around her eyes, the area under her nose and bottom lip and chin are the darkest. Note the area above her eyebrow, along her cheek and the edge of the nose. This is where the lightest values are. The rest of the face is medium. This technique gives the face volume. It doesn’t appear flat on the canvas.
This painting is from my advanced figure painting class when I was a student at the University of Utah. The model was in a low-light setting. You will notice that only the essentials are portrayed — the eyes, nose and mouth. She is basically silhouetted. The eyes are in a shadow, so only the eyelid is shown. Note the highlights on the eyelid, the nose and chin. The back wall is painted light, giving contrast to the figure. The top part of her body is lighted, but the other is in shadow. The shadow is one dark shape.
I’m paddling with my daughter and her two children. My grandson, Jacob, is enthralled by the water. He leans over to drag his hand through it. My daughter, Sarah, grabs his pants to keep him from falling in.
I’m fed up with trying to paint like others want me to. I’m tired of the central Indiana art scene. The only way to make it with them is to paint barns. You have to use the same exact techniques. You can’t tell the difference between one artist and the other. Their paintings fill the local galleries and gather dust. From now on, I’m going to paint what I feel like and how I feel like. I don’t care if I ever get into another show or sell another painting.
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