New Paintings: Little Portraits

Hold onto your hole(s), folks.  It's time to start a new painting project.

And this time it's not just ONE painting, it's two.  At the same time!

*screaming and fainting*

Ok, it's not that dramatic.  Each canvas is only 8x8, so it's not really a challenge to work on two during the three hour class time.  In fact, I need to have two because each is so small they quickly get covered with wet paint that needs to dry before I can work with it again.

So, what am I up to this time?

Portraits.

This is a twist on what I originally wanted to do but couldn't get oval canvases in time.  Originally I wanted to do two Robot Portraits each on an oval canvas.  I was miffed when the ovals weren't available in time but now that I'm working with the 8x8s I'm very happy.  And I'm still doing portraits.  One is even a robot.

See, when you have a small canvas you feel so much more productive.  I went from blank to that there last night.  And I'm happy to add, I got no help from my wife.  Previous paintings I had him get my photo for me (print it out) and even supervise on gridding both photo and canvas.  I don't need him for that anymore.  I just put the canvas over my photo to trim it down (folded down the paper to get it to 8x8).  Then gridding it out was easy.  Even my puny math muscles can handle dividing 8 by 4 and drawing some straight lines.

For the record, I'm using THIS photo.

Giving it a quick look, I think I have the angle of the top of Mr. Roboto's head off a little.  But I can get that all hammered out as I work the painting more.

So, once I had that canvas completely covered I needed to move on to the next.

Once again, I got the entire canvas covered before class was over.  It was timed pretty much perfectly.  This one's not as exciting to look at yet but that's just because of the subject.  Yet again I'm working with black so it will take a bit for this one to really start taking shape.

Reference photo:

Priscilla!

The shaping is pretty decent but I know it's going to morph a lot as I work on this.  I'm really excited to work on her button eye.  I love the coloring and the three bright dots on it.  It's also going to be a fun challenge to get her circle spots rendered well.  (for the record, the reference photo is cropped a bit top and bottom to fit the 8x8 canvas)

I'm aiming to get both as nicely blended and "realistic" as "Jackie and Xerxes".  So that means I'll most likely be working these for the rest of the semester.  If I get to the point where both are wet and I need something to occupy my time I'll probably start another 8x8.  I think I want to do another pair featuring T.P. Day and Mr. Durr.  And of course I need to make one for (the yet unfinished) Cylindra (the companion robot to Mr. Roboto).

One last pic for the road.

I just enjoy "work space" photos.  In this one you can see the photo my wife is using for his current photo.  Yeah, that's me striking a pose there.  At first I was grossed out that he was using my photo for a painting but I'm used to it now.  I hate photos of myself but I kind of like a painting of myself.  It doesn't hurt that the image is rather small so you can't immediately tell it's me.  I teased him that he needs to make me thinner in the painting (since I'm not that fat anymore).  At least get rid of my double chin!

I'm glad to be back to painting and loving the little canvases.