Painting Portraits
The portrait project is coming along slowly. For the painting on the right I used a black and white photo as a reference. It was a good learning exprience to let my mind fill in the colors. The one on the left was completed using a very small blurry photo for a reference. That was very hard since I think the finished painting has the same blurry quality which, I'm not completely happy with. I am happy with adding the patterned background on these two paintings. I think I'm going to keep doing that for future portraits. Some thoughts to share from working on these last two paintings;
1. I know the frustration Van Gogh must have felt because that ear drove me nuts! It still looks wrong but, I had to let it go.
2. As much as I would like to buy lots of different colors of paint, for the portraits, there's really only four or five colors that I use consistently.
3. I bought myself a stay wet palette. We will see if it helps me save paint.
4. Two hours on a portrait is enough. Then it's time to step away.
5. I really like painting text and patterns.
Check out others I've completed so far in my portrait project. You can follow me on instagram too #portraitprojectnancybenton