I ran into Kelly recently and remembered that I had once tried to paint her…like over 20 years ago. We were at an outdoor party and I had my digital camera. she was 14 or 15 and her back was to me. She had used the leaves of a weeping willow to make a crown. When she turned I snapped the photo cutting off the top of her head. I throw the images I use for paintings into a wine box in a closet…really pleased that the photo printout was there.
Looking at the really good notes I took from the class I took last year, I went through the process, thumbnail sketch, one color value painting, then the painting then noticed that the last sentence of the notes said never to take up all of the paper with the head…which is exactly what I had done..so I got out a larger better piece of paper and began again. Still working on that …can’t decide what to do with the background . Will post when I resolve that.
This is the one from 20+ years ago.
This has everything I like in a post! Besides a beautiful near-final piece of art, I love seeing the process. It's obvious what each of the studies adds to the final. And it's always nice to see how much you've improved over the years. Beautiful, Greeta!
ReplyDeleteLove seeing the process and I love both paintings. The one from 20 years ago is more stylized and graphic and the current one more realistic. But in both the gaze makes the painting. Btw, I’ve never heard that rule about the head not filling the painting…and I think Alex Katz might disagree…
ReplyDeleteI don't know why anybody would recommend cutting off the top of a head.
ReplyDeleteHa ha. I cut it iff in my photo but what he meant was the head should have some space around it.
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