Beginnings

What is this mess of brown, you ask? Well, all that study of white reminded me that I never really resolved my problem with yellow. I had intended to copy a nice yellow floral painting, but never got around to it (I had even printed one out to copy). It always seems like a big job and one I don't really have time for, but I decided to just do it anyway, and maybe try to learn a few things, even though it's not going to be perfect. Here's the quick start (30-40 minutes this morning before the kids woke up). I hope to get a little more time on it this afternoon, but already, I'm just loving this artist's mastery of color and value and paint application. It's all so intentional and masterful--every stroke has a definite purpose, temperature, value, and place, and there's so much variety in the subtlety (no pushing around paint here ;).

 And ohhh boy, here's the beginning of this month's figure drawing, 9 hours in. I have a feeling I'm not going to get too far on this one (since I will only have half the regular amount of time on it anyway). But I'm having a LOT of trouble locking in the proportions on this one. And as I'm looking at those feet in this picture, I'm pretty sure they're about a full inch too long. Yikes. And I shaved down the size of the head yesterday, but now I'm feeling like the relationships of her head to her receding shoulder and breast seem off. And let's not talk about the portrait--okay, let's do. After the quick lay-in I felt like it had some semblance of her likeness. But the more I work on it, the worse it gets, eek. I know what I'm doing. When I lay something in quick, I'm doing a better job of considering the whole picture, and as I get zoned in on this eye, or that shadow, I lose my focus on the relationship to the whole. I know what I'm doing and yet I still do it! Ha. Oh, well. That's why I'm practicing. I have some work to do here. Wish me luck :P