Saturday, January 18, 2014

Nine little jewels

Nine portraits together

What fun it is to see all the portraits produced in the exhibition so far together like this in a photo montage. It's nice to be able to appreciate the differences between them, and they look like little colourful sweets!
Yesterday my model was Jenni, another lovely blog subscriber whom it was a great pleasure to chat with throughout the day. Jenni wore a bright pink scarf which I couldn't ignore, particularly as the pinks were reflected up into her face and neck. 
I knew that such a strong colour would have to be added to the painting at quite an early stage. I really enjoyed mixing the colours for Jenni's hair, and painting her 'hardly there' spectacles. Spectacles are a great lesson in painting what you are seeing and not what you think you are seeing. Don't be frightened of tackling them in a portrait, they usually make really helpful markers to help you see distances between eyes, nose, ears, hair etc. On Jenni's the glass parts were rimless, which was so much fun because I only had to show them by painting the shadow underneath them on her cheeks, and one little slender corner which was catching the light.


Exhibition portrait day 9 Jenni


Stage 1 - raw umber


Stage 2 - getting straight on with the pinks



Jenni





3 comments:

  1. Haidee, these portraits are so wonderful! I've been looking forward to each post, just to see who would be next and how you would approach the painting. Not only are they all beautifully painted, but the likenesses are marvelous. Thanks for showing us the process. And I am so pleased for you on the sales front, absolutely fabulous to have so many happy customers!

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    1. Thank you very much Bobbi, it's been a great experience :-)

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  2. Your work has been awesome! What a great idea and a brave one! You are so talented and it comes through on all of your work here!

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Thank you for your words!