It may seem, from the lack of illustrations on this blog for the past few weeks, that I haven't been doing any. In fact that's pretty much all I've been doing. I have been working on a new commission (will show you that after it has arrived to it's new owner). This week marked the end of some courses I've been taking; a portrait class, and also going on with my life drawing classes... Getting back to the fundamentals. It's good practice, and no matter how much of it I do, it's always challenging.I find when I focus on classic drawing skills, my work naturally sways that way for a while.
Some of you may recall when I started this painting. Every now and then I get a big urge to paint a canvas. I started this, and then before it was completed I signed up to enter it into a local art show. The show opens tonight, and I only just finished the painting in time. (Those hands had me beat!). I entered it into the show in a hope that someone would buy it (because I don't have enough space to start keeping canvases like this).
It's called Rosa. I named it that because the inspiration for the painting was Picasso's rose period works. (PLEASE don't even try to compare them). I love the way he uses black outline on his figures (something you're often told NOT to do), and the bold background colours. Sadly, no matter how often I try I always overwork my paintings and lose that beautiful rough, simplified quality he has in his figures and paint application. I need to practice deconstructing the figure a bit more... and setting a time limit of the work so that I speed up the process and keep a roughness to it.
So while it's clear that I'm certainly no Picasso, it's been a good exercise. I look forward to the day when one of my paintings comes out the way I'd intended it to in the beginning... though I've got a fair way to go yet.
5 comments:
She is lovely!
If it makes you feel any better, it is rare that any of my paintings come out the way I initially intended or had in mind from the beginning. Art has a funny way of developing a life or its own, or at least, that has been my experience with it thus far. The unpredictable factor is what makes it exciting too, though!
She's a beauty. She looks like velevet - there's a real opulence to the texture of the skin and the hair, and the colors are so rich! The hands - wow! Delicate, expressive... this is a gorgeous painting. I can relate to having paintings end up differently than imagined, but so often it is a wonder to see how they've painted themselves.
This is really gorgeous!! Wow....
I love it. It's all glowy and soft and just beautiful.
This is wonderful and I must say an extremely good job on the hands. I like how you used both hard and soft lines throughout. There is real attention to the face and the hands. And I love the hints of yellow and hints of blues. I could look at this all day!!
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