Another digital portrait from last year (or maybe even earlier!) that I’m only posting now (woops!). This is not the first time I’ve painted this model. What can I say? The proportions of her face just seem so mathematically perfect to me!
I really miss doing portraits. I am this close to putting the call out on Facebook or Instagram asking for people to send me pictures of them just so I don’t have to fall back on self-portraits or pestering my immediate family to pose for me.
I experimented with a new (well, new to me) digital art software last year called ArtRage. It styles itself as a “natural” painting software, which I guess means that they don’t over-burden the program with all kinds of photo editing doodads and just keep to the essentials. ArtRage also limits their brushes to only a few wet and dry media, palette knives and the like, so if you’re new to digital art, you’re less likely to feel overwhelmed. Best of all, they make very believable visible brush strokes, which is what first drew me to the software. Oh, and the price is very affordable – always a good thing! I had an easier time negotiating the colour palette in Artrage in comparison with Photoshop, but blending turned out to be a little difficult (but then, maybe I just haven’t experimented with it enough).
When I made this, I was trying to get away from working from images found on the internet, but Salem Mitchell has such glorious freckles that I couldn’t resist!
When it comes to selecting a seat on the train between Montreal and Toronto, you have two choices: you can either face Southwards and catch a view of Lake Ontario (for at least part of the trip), or you can face North and watch endless farmland and villages roll by. I’m so glad I chose the land side because who would want to miss out on a sunset like this?
Early morning fog and endless grass that melds with the shoreline of the St-Lawrence… AND just off to the right, the Trans-Canada highway that zips through the pilgrimage town of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré. You can’t have everything, right?
On a whim, I decided last week to crack open one of my many vintage magazines and see if I could reproduce an image. I am beyond amazed that I actually managed to 1) finish something, and 2) find that I’m happy with the result, especially considering how flat and grainy the original image was! I especially wanted to throw in the towel once I got to rendering the hair (never my strong suit). Let’s hear it for perseverence!
To me, this portrait is a direct result of all the practice, practice, practice that began with the portrait studies of the “30 Paintings in 30 Days” challenge. Even though the reference image had matte colours and little light information, I had completed enough portraits over the last few years to be able to fill in the blanks. There’s no way I would have been able to do this without having put myself through that “boot camp”!
We had a stellar view from our Huttopia campsite at the Baie Ste-Marguerite sector of Parc Nationale du Saguenay. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the bay is subject to low tide on a daily basis and essentially turns into a large sandbar during most daylight hours. Great for exploring, but… not the swimming hole we were expecting.
Still, early mornings and evenings were spectacular. Believe it or not, there was even a heron posed in the long grass (for real!), but I didn’t include it in the painting because I thought it would end up looking fake.
Ever feel the need to try something different? My first love will always be portraits, with landscapes coming up a close second, but I admit that I also have a soft spot for geometric abstract paintings. This is something I only came around to later in life (and I’m sure that my teenage self would be horrified by that fact if they could see into the future, but what did she know, anyways?). As I stare down the barrel of a another seven months of Montreal winter – and a socially-distanced one, to boot! – I see no reason why I can’t stretch the old artistic muscles in new, unfamiliar directions.
Don’t let the brush marks fool you – this is all digital! ArtRage is an inexpensive software that does the best job, in my opinion, of imitating real paint strokes, and while my husband and I are still working from home (and I am consigned to the diningroom while he takes over the office/studio), digital will continue to be the way to go for me.
Hard-edged abstraction might not be your cup of tea, but even so, I urge you to check out the work of Carmen Herrera, a Cuban abstract painter who only ever received recognition for her work when she was well into her 90’s (she’s currently 105 years young, and still going strong)! I love her work the more minimalist it gets. The fact that she kept at it regardless of whether or not the official gatekeepers took notice of her is truly inspirational!
Almost six months into this crazy alternate reality that is Life in Lockdown, doesn’t it feel like we’re all driving down a lonely highway in the middle of the night? We know that we’ll eventually end up at our destination (safe and sound, hopefully), but until then, while we’re still in transit… it can all seem a little frightening. Stay safe, everyone!
The time has come to set aside landscapes and dive back into portraiture!
And wouldn’t you know it? I got so used to landscapes that I found this portrait to be a bit more of a challenge than I had anticipated. This image represents a few days of work, at least! Of course, I walked into it thinking “I’ll just keep it fresh, and loose, and, you know… painterly” and, well, THAT went out the window pretty quickly. I think it’s a leftover reaction to my art school days when we never had enough time to finish anything, and even if we did, we were always discouraged from painting anything that looked too realistic (“skillful”, some might say). With no teachers or peers around me, I can noodle to my heart’s content – and so I do!
Anyways, this is Yola, a model with a Russian modelling agency called Lumpen. Their entire roster is comprised of Real People, which I think is very cool.