Once again I return to this method of painting a face. This is a portrait of my heart side, a man I recently became reacquainted with.
This painting method is incredibly useful for learning a face. It helps me see midtones and shadow, and keeps me from painting with the left side of my brain. A vigorating exercise which helps me see in ways I couldn’t before and keeps me guessing until the very end. I keep all of the portraits I painted this way in a book. Maybe some day my descendants will get a kick out of looking through them.
There are many pleasures that come with painting. The pleasure of the colors, the pleasure of the effect of the paper, the pleasure of the results. Daniel Smith Watercolors has actually formulated colors made from semi-precious stones. Most of them are not too impressive to me, but there is one that I really like. I have mixed feelings about it, because to make the paint, they have to crush the stones. The ocean in this painting is pigment from the Sleeping Beauty Turquoise mine. I use this color often but have never mentioned what it is before. This is another postcard on the 600 pound handmade Indian Village paper. It is really satisfying to paint on it. It seems to help me paint. Come here, touch here, go there, add here…
Last week, my sister gave me a whole bag of 600 pound Indian Village postcard sized papers. It is wrinkly and irregular, and really fun to paint on. I am getting a kick out of painting on it, even though it does not lend itself well to detail. This measures 4 x 6″ and I haven’t decided what I am going to do with it yet.
