Portrait Love

I'm taking an online portrait class from Kate Thompson, which I'm thoroughly enjoying, although I'm a terrible online student I have to admit, and pretty much only do the lessons that look fun to me.  Fortunately I find most of hers fun, and so have been working through some of them.  Below are some of the results.

various pencils, charcoal

I've found that I just really enjoy doing portraits - they're just fun to me, once I get going.  For some reason it always takes willpower for me to get into my studio and start, but once I get into them, they're just FUN.  Add a little shading here, remove a little here, move a line a little and all of a sudden there's a completely new expression, it fascinates me how the smallest changes can make such a difference.  And I love that moment when I'm working on one and suddenly it turns from marks or paint on paper to a real person looking back at me.

Charcoal, gesso, pastel

This is another painting I did on one of my old prescription ledger pages after my first attempt at gelli-plating them (has that actually become a verb yet?)  Anyway, the pages do make for fun, textured backgrounds.

Summer of Color

I've given in - I finally bought a gelli plate. I experimented with some pages torn out of my old pharmacy ledger from 1917 and I made a ridiculous mess, but had a lot of fun.  One of the pages was done primarily with pinks and orange, and as those are the colors for this week's Summer of Color, hosted by the lovely Kristin at Twinkle Twinkle, I thought I'd join in and paint a face on it.. 

I love this paper so much because it's so strong it can take anything, and I just love the old handwriting that shows through.

Time Passage

My friend Judy, who loves roaming antique stores as much as I do, found some wonderful old large photos of sites in Italy, with a fabric backing.  Knowing right away how much I'd love them she bought them for me, along with a wonderful old book, and I got a very exciting package in the mail.  I thought the least I could do was make her something with one of the photos, and this was the result. It's made on a piece of linen, with lots of plaster and layers. History and the passage of time are endlessly fascinating to me, and I love trying to express that in my art.

The glass in the watch face above is cracked, which I really liked because it just adds to the feel of that passage of time, the inevitable decay (that's for you Diana, you know who you are) even though decay often makes things more beautiful, to me at least.  I love imagining what life was like for these women in the photo.

This is a quick sketch I did from a photo in my little kraft paper journal, I'd like to do a painted version sometime.