Washed Out, But Not Done In

Nothing washed out here. Pitch black hair, dramatically made up, smokey eyes and bright red,
sensuously full lips is Taylor's look at eighteen. 

My studio is a wash out for me today. Carpet cleaners took over the place and I can't get there from here. The floors are cold and wet and I have to go barefoot. The guys came in like gangbusters, zip-pity-do-da, give me the money lady and they were out the door, leaving me with clean carpets and couches, but no where to sit and few places to walk.  But I'm thrilled. All the acrylic blobs and charcoal shards  that had walked out of my studio on the bottom  of my shoes are gone and with those smears, my guilt for not wearing studio-only shoes is gone too. I will change my ways. --I hope I can change my ways.

Before I was locked out, I  did manage to  explore Taylor's current look with a dark/light little portrait exercise in charcoal.  I found the reference photo on her FB page, along with quite a few other portrait shots that might make interesting paintings after I tackle JD crowing. My granddaughter is a knock out in her Goth get ups. The doorbell stopped me from soften her chin and darkening the shadow of her lower lip and... but there's a resemblance that needs just minor tweaks.

My reference photo

About three minutes into the charcoal, I reached for black pastel and as soon as I used it was convinced Sargent definitely used black and white pastels in his charcoal drawings.  Charcoal alone does not get you the dramatic values that you see in his black and whites or that I needed for Taylor's hair.

With no studio and no art supplies,  I wiled away the afternoon cleaning a cupboard in the kitchen where I found art pads. It seems I like to draw in them only so much, then I abandon them for new ones.  The drawings in the older pads were early blog stuff when I was still  just trying to establish  regular drawing habits. In the ones  from last year, portraits started to show up. There was one sketch in particular that I found interesting.  I was studying the subject of my first full figure portrait, Ellis, in value patterns, the way I learned in the workshop I took this last month. So why didn't I pick up on that approach then? Why didn't I didn't trust myself? I obviously needed someone more authoritative than myself.  Each year, we grow. Looking back, over the last couple of years, I've grown a lot.

2010 sketch for portrait in progress of Ellis--and JD at age six or seven. It's the sketch of Ellis that's important.

In the Ellis sketch, I'm thinking in values;
the JD sketch I'm thinking details. Both
sketches have value in evaluating how to
best present a subject. Perhaps using both methods?

I tried another approach to portraiture with Ellis: The Alex Katz flat color approach. This was done in 2010 also as a study for the full figure painting. Prior to this, I had only used pencil.  Jd's portrait was done in pencil from the sketch above.

There's a pencil under-drawing in this one. I never did finish it;
I don't know why. But this too is an interesting approach to
portraiture especially with acrylics.

And this is the final result of my first painted portraiture endeavor.
It's okay. Not great. But a definite sign of a genre that  would eventually interest me.