Fun, Food, and Portraits

Last Sunday, Jesse and Lindz put on a baby shower for one of their friends, and I haalped. We got up early Sunday morning to decorate and prepare food before church.  It was a wonderful shower with lots of people and gifts for the new parents.  We can throw a good party.

It hasn't been all food and fun and puppies lately.  I have been doing some art.  My friend, Barb took some interesting photos of Emily (mentioned here).  Barb used what is called Rembrandt lighting in her photos - notice the triangle of light on the dark side of the face. We wanted to try this lighting in our portrait painting and work on getting skin color/tone.  It was difficult.  I love doing portraits, but usually when doing portraits, I work in pastels. Watercolor portraits do not seem to be my cup of  tea. Although I won third place with this portrait of GBN1 in an art show several years ago.

So, Barb and I have done a couple of sessions on painting Emily.  We re-watched my Janet Rogers video.  You may remember that I took a workshop with Janet several years ago. We tried painting like Janet to no avail.  So we watched another video by some other artist.

Here are my two attempts.  I traced these rather than drawing free-hand, because I was more interested in the color and paints and did not want to spend lots of time on a drawing.  Then Barb said one of her teachers suggested doing a pencil sketch before any painting - to get the values right.  Here is my pencil sketch along with the photo - not exactly great, but it had purpose. It is amazing how when I post these paintings, I can see the flaws.  I will work on the sketch more.

We tried another painting yesterday that I won't post.  It looked like we had been drinking - maybe we should drink before we attempt this portrait again - maybe it would loosen us up. I took several photos of my work this morning and wanted to include this one. Notice that I was standing in a chair looking down on the table and included my foot.  Heh.