Well here we are in the Spring of 2011 and I haven't posted in forever. What with traveling over Christmas and doing other things my painting kind of was put aside. Here are a couple of things I have done this year so far and now I'm really trying to do some painting each day for one challenge or another or trying to learn a new technique. Just to catch up and have a record of what I have done this year.

We have a portrait challenge where we do at least one portrait a month. Here were my attempts so far.

This was the first one I attempted. Really lots wrong with this one, his eyes are too close, pupils too large, skin not too bad and hair was kind of fun to do. Good experience. On to the next one.



Liked parts of this little boy, some of his skin tones and eyes. Had a bit of problem with his hair but all and all not too bad.

Next was this little girl. Again I liked lots about this one, fairly satisfied, really worked on her hair and her eyes which were an incredible blue. Really struggled with the right eye, it looks okay but could have been better if I had used good paper. Sometimes when I do these paintings I use my cheap paper which is a huge mistake. What if I really like something? Need to keep this in mind.


This is really one of my favorites so far. I used only one color of paint an indigo blue to make a monochrome painting just using different tones and values. He looked so sad and he really could be every man from anywhere in the world really.



This one I did yesterday. Our challenge was to take a photo of a bust of a man (probably some old Roman guy) and paint it emphasizing the shapes and shadows. The photo had a blue tone. People were saying he was creepy probably because these statues or busts don't have any pupils or iris in their eyes it is just the white part with the lids. So I decided to use a color that is used sometimes as an underpainting called caput mortuum violet (the name suited this guy's status) but used it to warm him up. This one when I finished made me giggle because he is really creepy now but kind of cool.



Then for something a little different for the past month we are doing a challenge of taking a picture that is posted and taking a part of it and painting it any way we wish. We sketch it out, some folks did lots of sketches, that's not my thing but I did do one sketch, then I cropped the photo to get where I wanted to emphasize. Then I mixed two pages of colors. I'll tell you I was really ready to give up because as you can see there are a lot of greens in this painting and they are all mixed from different blues and yellows, no tubes of green were used. As I said I was ready to dump it and give up but kept on. This was my final which we posted yesterday. Not too bad.



So next month we have a new challenge, a still life with a lot of bright colors. Should be fun. Now I need to go to my painting room and work on another portrait that I am just doing for practice. It is one that a friend has done and posted and I am trying to learn the technique but will post when I finish.