Unlike the initial four, these new portraits will all be done on a whim, with various things inspiring me to do them rather than saying "OK, I have 4 to do and 5 weeks to do them" as I did on the first set. This is nice if I'm not finding anything inspirational until a suitable picture or idea turns up.
Christine
This is what happened with the first picture. Christine injured herself in a fall, and coincidentally I got a stress free afternoon off work a few days later, so I thought "Time I painted her a picture." If you're a regular reader of the blog you'll have seen this picture already, but just in case you're not, here it is again (uncropped this time). All the images are expandable from here on out by the way.
I have to say, I was really pleased by how easy Christine was to paint. So easy in fact that I started, and then 90 minutes later I was done. No step by steps because I was so into the painting I forgot to save until the end (usually I'll get paranoid I'm going to make a mess of it and save several times as I go along). She's got a great smile, and primarily it was capturing the smile that was my reason for painting this particular picture (Though she grins like a loon in most photos, in this one she was doing herself proud in the big beautiful smile stakes). After all, if you've injured yourself and are feeling down you don't want someone painting you all gloomy and morose looking, right? I thought the red went well with that too - usually an angry colour, in this case it has a very festive vibe I feel. So, other than the fact that Chris seemed very pleased with it (didn't use it as her profile pic though) there's not much else to say.
Dan
When the initial list of people came in that wanted portraits painted I went and took a look at their facebook photos. This one of Dan jumped out at me for some reason, so I saved it. I've been looking for a good reason (and time) to paint it for six months. My chance came on Dan's birthday. Perfect reason for a profile picture. So I set to work.
The original image has another person in it, leaning on Dan's shoulder, so I just left them out. This time I also remembered to make step by step saves (but not that many) over the two hours of painting. With the exception of the first the others are about 30 minutes apart.
Not much else to say about it - I don't even know why I found the photo so captivating - maybe it's the unusual lighting, or the angle, or the roughness of his cap, or his peculiar thoughtful expression. I do know I made a bit of a mess of his eyes, and I had no idea how difficult painting a beard would be. Lucky I had the practice on those though, because next up we have another beard, and glasses again.
Robby
Finally we come to this picture. Of the three it probably looks least like the subject, but, if you know him, and have seen his beard lately, there's no doubt who it's supposed to be. I'd been planning to paint Robby for quite some time, but never got around to it as none of his photos really grabbed me as the one of Dan had. But then he uploaded his latest profile pic, and I knew it was one I had to paint.
Oddly, this was by far the hardest picture of the three to paint. In fact usually when I have a painting go the way this one started to I give up and either start again or abandon it all together. This time I had a something to keep me going, and I'm glad I did as it turned out OK in the end. Not an exact likeness, but pretty close With his recent beard growth he does look remarkably like Hagrid from Harry Potter, if you were making that connection.
Why was this one so difficult? I honestly don't know. Paint wasn't blending the way I wanted it to, colours weren't coming out the way I thought they would, everything was going wrong. The Magic Line occurs at about the one minute mark in the video I've embedded below. Oh, yeah, the video - Remember I had a reason to keep going? That's because I was recording the whole thing. It's not painted at the speed you'll see it here of course - it actually took about two and a half hours, but I recorded in timelapse, giving the video a reasonable viewing length of 2:25. Things usually go smoother than this - but my wife says that my struggles with it don't come through at all in the video, so I suppose that's something right? If you want to watch the video large click the little You Tube link right where the colour wheel is located.
Incidentally, it looks like my time is going to get tight again for a little while shortly, but until then I have a reasonable amount of things to post about. We'll see if I can keep posting while the clock is tight eh?
lovely job :)
ReplyDelete