The Winter semester of my painting course will be focusing on portraiture. I must admit that this frightens me greatly. I don’t like staring at my own face, much less staring into the eyes of another to paint them. I’m also not a fan of realism in any sense. So, this challenge has many levels for me and I’m ready to dive in. So, I’m approaching it exactly as I do all new explorations… by playing with the media at hand. I have loads of stuff to play with: watercolours, dry and oil pastels, crayons (homemade encaustic), watercolours, oils, and acrylics. I also have loads of drawing materials and inks to play with too. So, let’s dive into the materials and see what they can do, shall we?
This is the first trial with the material. As usual, I was trying to focus on accuracy first. I quickly realized that I will continue hating this subject matter if I did that and let go of form for feeling. I stared at the selfie I just took for a few seconds and then let it go and painted from memory. I will also be letting go of the colour concerns and let my instinct express the image. This image is further distorted due to the fact that I didn’t paint my glasses, even though they were in the picture. The funny thing is that I know I have a big nose, but it is really huge in comparison to the proportions of my face. I’ll take this as a first observation and let observations grow too.
Subject: Me ( from selfie on iPhone)
Materials: watercolour paper, dry pastels, glossy acrylic varnish
Dimensions: 14″ (35.6cm) x 10.5″ (26.7cm)
Prints & more available at Arts MPerron @ https://1-mario-perron.pixels.com
The New Renaissance Mindset 