Old Lion at Bay: 04.12

Sunday, April 29, 2012

375 and 376

It's finals time, and I'm awake a lot. A LOT. And my portraits are just a weeeeee bit horrifying. But, here they are. I like the top one, #375, better. It's awesome.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Both are decently nice paintings. It's finals season. So, yucky greens and the bright red/orange of anxiety.
#373 is a nice, sad, weird. But, more than the green hair and line work, the soft washes of the almost-shaded edges. The one edge, the line created by the wash on the right side of the nose, is just the best thing in the world right now.
#374 has the blue strokes in the hair. I'm still figuring how to get the paint to be darkest and boldest. Watercolor takes some getting used to.
At least, it's very obvious that this is my style. I'm trying to be Schiele, but I'm coming through.
Also, I really wish I'd chosen better paper. Each of these takes up a full page of Sketch paper, 60lbs, but textured. Otherwise, it crumples up. Not crumble. That's about cake.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

370, 371, 372

#370 - from photo, I used a white crayon to try to enforce highlights. Not particularly successful.

#371 - from photo, a nice photo, but I'm unable to get the width of the nose correct. Attempted realistic color and skin tones, but the contrast of the shadows is confusing to me.

*doesn't look anything like me.

*Sun. April 22

#372 - Success! From the same photo as 371, I drew outlines of color blocks in pen and filled in the colors with emphasis on warm and cool. I ran out of water (the watercolor set has a brush that holds water in it, making everything immensely portable) by the end of it, so the strokes start to get scratchy and the colors become very bold by the bottom of the hair, especially on the left. I tried to shy away from black.

Monday, April 23, 2012

367, 368, 369

Three-in-one post, which I should really do from now on.

#367 cartoony
#368 high contrast attempt, used too much black. from photo.
#369 not really from a photo, warm colors. watercolor rejects highlights that aren't planned

366

New blogger format. Surprise!
The first of the paintings.

Cartoony style + color!

One Year

I've finished one year. And how is it?

Well, my self-image has gotten more positive. I feel that I am a confident, beautiful woman, in my second year of college, with a wonderfully supportive family and boyfriend. I'm not sure if this is a result of the self-portraits, but they definitely were part of the transformation.

I'm not any more self-aware- I still trip over anything and everything. Artistically? I don't know if I've progressed so much. I've found a sort of style I like, which is the bottom half of #365. It reminds me of the old 1950s cartoons. It was good to experiment in styles- I've done that with me short exercise animations, too.

Next year I'll try to work with more realism, which will help my cartoons and get me out of the cartoon rut my self-portraits look like they're stuck in. Also, I found a mini watercolor set in my room, so I'll use that for as long as I can. I miss painting.

I wish I hadn't decided to start my 365 during finals, but I did, and now I'm doing watercolor self-portraits during finals. At least summer is looking up.

Another Year! Here's the first batch.