Gotta admit to a big screw up right up top. I added a darker blue pastel pencil to vignette the image. However, when I went to put wax on the painting, I was thinking "watercolor pencils." The difference is that you can smear protective wax medium on watercolor pencil, no problem. When you do that to pastel, it makes a huge mess. I corrected it a bit in photoshop in the above version.
On the plus side, by not coating it with wax, I was able to go back in and reactivate the paint to make corrections, mostly for the better. Normally, I put on wax when I'm tired of working on the painting, or think it's finished, or to purposely seal it to move on and avoid over working it. But here I made subtle corrections that really helped.
I painted this from a news photograph. It was a simple composition with the challenge of capturing the glow of the candle on the center woman, along with the warm light hitting her face from out of frame. I didn't quite get what was in the photo but I think it's a striking color scheme. I see that I wiped over the mask strings around her ear. But the net result of the changes are positive.
What's really outside my comfort zone is the fact that I'd try her face at all. I haven't tried close up humans since my cosplaying vikings piece. Human faces are just more shapes with varying values and color temperature. They should be no different than painting a flower. But we know what humans are supposed to look like. When it's a little off it can quickly look weird, even alien.
I'm still not sure what I want to do with painting. All these things I'm trying in my sketchbook are about getting more comfortable with the basics. Ultimately, I think I want to do more fanciful things. Early on. I planned on doing a western painting of cowboys riding herd on a bunch of giant bees. I did a test painting of a single bee and decided I had more to learn. Still may return to that one. But for now, I'm trying to get good enough so that I can do a decent job of getting my imagination down on canvas. Actually, more likely a heavy weight watercolor paper.
Here's the un-shopped image. Stay safe!
Woodcraft Ranger alum, circa 1965-67, do you have photos of your time there?
Posted by: Lee M Cohen | 02/09/2021 at 03:45 PM