Portrait 63/100

This is a paintover (can you guess what is under the portrait? Okay, the answer is grapefruits in a bowl). I painted over a still life that I liked, but did not love. So goodbye to that still life and hello to portrait #63. 

This lovely woman is wearing a patterned dress that I totally screwed up pattern-wise, but also was intrigued enough to repeat a similar pattern in the background in two places. What do you think? Would the background be better blank? I tend to fiddle with the backgrounds somewhat just to add more visual interest, which was my aim here. And I had made the whole painting so orange that I wanted a touch of blue somewhere other than the highlights in her hair. Perhaps it's too much blue and leads you too much away from her face? Anyway, the reference photo for this painting comes thanks to Bryce C. Liston and model Nadia S. So thank you to those two for the inspiring reference!

8x8" oil paint on linen panel.

Here are some process shots:

Portrait 62/100

I included another selfie on my progress toward my 100 portrait challenge. I made this painting using a photo reference that I manipulated color-wise. It started out with a very yellow lamp light, and I didn’t like how jaundiced it made me look, so I manipulated the colors using affinity photo (a great alternative to photoshop, by the way, requiring only a 1-time payment). I recently painted my parents at this same size, and now I'm waiting for my sisters to send me their photo references so I can complete our family portrait (without the family expansions, yet).

Oil paint on 8x8" mdf panel. Process images below:

Portrait 61/100

 

I loved painting this portrait of Jeanne, my MIL, who has been a sweetheart to me ever since I met her. Everything about the reference appealed to me--her direct gaze, her hair in a bun, the colors of her shirt and the blanket over the chair, the kitty in her lap, and the overall composition of light and dark shapes. Good times!

Oil paint on 12x12" linen panel. Here are some process shots. I started out getting general colors for large areas, and then I got more specific, adding thicker paint and more specific colors on top.

Portrait 60/100

 

I recently held a portrait commission giveaway, and the recipient of this portrait was one of two winners. 
I don't generally agree to painting teeth, because they can easily turn into a line of chiclets, but I tried it out on this portrait, and I think the teeth turned out okay. Thank you to Karen for the lovely reference photo of her daugther, I really enjoyed painting her.

This painting is in oil paint on 6x8” mdf panel. Here are some process shots. 

Portrait 59/100

 

My plein air painting buddy, Bill, invited me to a live model session in which he was the model. I managed to get a pretty good likeness during the live model session, which made me very happy. Then I took my painting home looked more carefully. In addition to not giving him hair, I made his head too wide. So fixing happened. And I couldn't help but get out my phthalo green for that background. Now the painting has a little more diversity of color.

 

Oil paint on 8x8" mdf panel.

Here are some process shots:

Portraits 57 and 58/100

 

These 8x8" oil paintings were especially wonderful to paint because I love these people so much. My dad acquiesced to a photo shoot, which he usually hates doing, because I wanted to include him in my portrait project. The portrait shows him in his living room with some of his environment defined, although I made the plant behind him and the rest of the room semi-abstract. I'm trying to avoid my portraits looking too much like photos and give a few obvious clues that they are paintings. With my mom, we were out on a walk and there was green all around. Instead of painting the foliage around her, I decided some panels of different greens would work (at least for me). On my palette for these two: titanium white, ultramarine blue, pyrrole red, hansa yellow medium, yellow ochre, and phthalo green. That green is yummy.

Portraits 55 and 56/100

I have a few commission pieces that I have permission to share here, and because each includes a person, I’m adding them to my 100-portrait project (numbers 55 and 56!), which I’m woefully behind on. I’m especially tickled about these commissions, because Gayle asked me to paint them as a reward to herself for an important milestone in her career. I felt a lot of trepidation in the beginning that she might not consider them a reward when she saw them (ack!), but I also felt deeply honored. I decided to lean into “honored” and went to work. The first is 12x16”, which many artists consider small, but I consider big. The second is 8x10”, which surprised me with its challenges—the details got very tiny! Both pieces stretched me in different ways and became good learning experiences. And Gayle and I are both happy with how they turned out (whew!).