A Portrait A Day 25 - Dad

My Daddy! :) Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12."

I painted Julia (whose hands were portrait #24) twice while in Sacramento, but somehow both of the times turned out to be "unblogably bad." So, here's my dad instead :)

A Portrait A Day 24 - Julia

Watercolor and watercolor stick on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Julia is a friend's friend...a photographer, a jeweler, and she also just opened a gallery in the heart of L'viv, the creative capital of Ukraine. She is one of the best friends of my best friend, and lives infinitely closer to my best friend than I do. In a way, she is what I could have been had I not left for the U.S. seven years ago. Only I wouldn't smoke.

I painted this instead of her face for two reasons: because this picture tells something about her that her face would not and because her face is my portrait-a-day 25. Enjoy, and don't smoke!

P.S. I will be traveling on Thursday or Friday and then visiting family and friends up in Sacramento, so may not be very diligent about the blog in the next two weeks.

Oh, and did I mention that I LOVE painting from black-and-white photos? About a third of the portraits-a-day were painted like that. And I just found out about a blog that does a bi-weekly challenge for painters who want to do just that, add color to black-and-white pictures: http://colormechallenge.blogspot.com/

A Portrait A Day 23 - blacksmith (WIP)

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 12x16". This blacksmith was working at the fair I did this weekend (the fair was an incomplete waste of time and money - would have been complete had I not been painting. At least I had more time to paint than I would have had at home).  I still want to do a couple of things in this painting but I'm too dead and tired tonight to finish.

I will also be uploading a couple of photos of him to the WetCanvas reference library, if anyone is interested. Probably tomorrow.

A Portrait A Day 22 - Greg

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Photo reference: Greg Durrett of Julia Kay's Portrait Party.

A Portrait A Day 21 - Goat Transforming into a Cathedral

Watercolor over acrylic gel medium, Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference photo is Goat Transforming into a Cathedral who is also in Julia Kay's Portrait Party, who makes fantastic art and whose Flickr name, when abbreviated, looks remarkably close to "Gotic" (this is the grand revelation I had when naming the image file). Enjoy!

P.S. I can kinda see a cathedral in that abstract background on the right...I mean, of course I planned it all to look like that ;)

A Portrait A Day 20 - Oliver and rainbow

Watercolor with touches of gesso on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference photo is Sandra's grandson, Oliver. The photo she sent me said "Oliver with rainbow," hence the background :)

A Portrait A Day 19 - Lara's Mom

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12. Painted from a picture of my friend's mom. I feel like I should have left it be around 25 minutes before I actually stopped - but I always want more darks, more depth, more definition. With all that, I lose some of the initial freshness and mood. I guess it's a very fine balance I need to learn to keep!

On a different note, this blog's views reached 10,000 yesterday and I'm happy as a true dork :) Thank you to everyone who came and looked at what I am doing here, and especially to those of you who keep coming back for more. You keep me going!

A Portrait A Day 18 - Angel Zhang

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Photo reference: Angel Zhang of Julia Kay's Portrait Party. Yeah...not very happy with this one. Overkill.

I worked on it while at my booth during a local event yesterday. People really like watching somebody paint (I do, too) and I'm getting used to the pressure of somebody looking over my shoulder. It's not that bad when you space out and ignore the world outside of your painting (which I do anyway, regardless of spectators).

Wordpress was down last night (second night in a row actually...all the more reason in favor of migrating this blog to my own hosting, which I am in the process of doing), so posting today.

A Portrait A Day 17 - Michael Scholl

Watercolor on Arches cp 140lb, 9x12". Photo reference is Michael Scholl of Julia Kay's Portrait Party.

A Portrait A Day 16 - Kate

Watercolor and acrylic gel medium on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Interesting thing: Arches paper seems much softer after Canson Montval, much more absorbing (less sizing??) and more difficult to wipe or scrub paint off of.

The reference photo is Kate Larmuth of Julia Kay's Portrait Party.

Oh. And this was not a 30 minute painting, as you can probably tell.

A Portrait A Day 15 - Ken Meyer Jr

Watercolor on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12. Took me around 35 minutes, not counting a couple of breaks. The painting turned out very saturated and colorful and I had difficulties making the image match the painting. This should give a rough idea, though, of course, it's almost always better in person.

Ken Meyer Jr is an artist and illustrator I "met" through RedBubble.com. He sent me some pictures for my A Portrait A Day project and this is the interpretation of one of them. Check out Ken's website here.

A Portrait A Day 14 - Isabella

Watercolor on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12". Isabella is a 7 year old girl I met at one of the Barstow Harvey House Market Days. She likes to make art, and yesterday she participated in the market as an artist. Take a look at her booth:

I think she pretty much sold out by the end of the day...Unlike me :) (we did make the space fee and the babysitter back, plus a little more that we spent on food and stuff). I bought one of her paintings, too. It depicts Joseph wearing his multicolored robe while his mean brothers sneer at him. I'll put it up in Elijah's room.

More posts are coming, I promise :). Life with a 1 year old has been a little hectic recently - but I'm still sticking to my 206-portraits plan. After doing it for two weeks, however, I realized that 30-minute rule does not work for me very well. I usually end up spending an extra 10-20 minutes getting the painting where I want it to be. So, my new time limit is an hour or less. I still think it's important to keep an eye on the clock for these quick studies, since one of my goals is to get faster.

A Portrait a Day - self-portrait

Watercolor and watercolor sticks on Canson Montval CP 140 lb, 9x12". Painted from life in around 35 mins; the beeeauuutiful bespectacled model is yours truly :D.

A Portrait A Day 12 - Sveta

Didn't get around to posting this one yesterday, so here it goes. Painted from a photo of my cousin's wife Sveta, but I definitely didn't do her smiling face justice. Spent over an hour trying to make it work and still not happy with it. I'll call it a "learning experience" and count towards those 1000 bad paintings that you are supposed to get out of your system before you get to the good stuff ;)

Watercolor on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12" (running out of those...will switch to Arches soon).

Oh, and today is my birthday, so I will celebrate by painting your humble servant (myself)!

A Portrait A Day 11 - Tim Clary

Watercolor and watercolor sticks on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference photo: Tim Clary from Julia Kay's Portrait Party. Tim's blog here: http://sketchhatch.blogspot.com/

Not sure his eyes are green, the photo was black-and white ;).  I went with dark brown/black at first, but somehow, it wasn't very expressive.

A Portrait A Day 10 - Gloria

Watercolor and watercolor sticks on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12". Painted from a black and white picture of my friend Gloria (who doesn't like it when people call her Grace) that I took during my film photography class at Berkeley. I met her through a Christians on Campus club and she was one of the highlights of my life at the school.

A portrait a day 9 - Esther

Yes, I know there was no post yesterday. That's because I didn't paint on Friday! And I can completely blame it on my husband, that was all his fault. I set everything up for painting and was about to begin when he asked me if I could wait a little. So I did. Then he told me I had an appointment and had to go somewhere. I had no clue what he was talking about but took the car keys and followed the directions from the GPS. When I got to the place, the first thing I saw was a huge banner with big red letters spelling "MASSAGE" and then "Day Spa Jolie" sign on the building... I had a full body treatment waiting for me, and it was wonderful. I felt maybe not like a princess but at least a duchess. :) And imagine my joy when I came back home and the dinner was ready (made from scratch! So much for his attempts to make me believe he can't cook! ), the house cleaned, and the baby washed and fed.  Oh, and flowers! And since my birthday is not until Thursday the 16th, all this was a big and very pleasant surprise. Aaah...I love my husband :)

So now I have a missed portrait to make up for. The one I painted yesterday is Esther, another friend of Sandra's:

View fullsize

esther

Watercolor, watercolor sticks, and gesso on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12. No drawing, as usual with these quick paintings. Esther is 96. This is my first time painting an older person, and I would love to do more!

A portrait a day 8 - Grandpa George

So, who is this good-looking dude? An American superhero? Nope. A hero of the Soviet revolution? Closer. Meet my grandpa Georgy Agapov. I don't know much about him. He died when my mom was 6 and she rarely mentioned him at all.

Watercolor on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12". A video of the painting process is coming soon!

A portrait a day 7 - Kiera on the swing

Watercolor and AJ watercolor sticks on Canson Montval CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference photo is the daughter of Sandra's friends (which means somebody actually did send me a photo to work from! ;)). It is so much more interesting than browsing through pictures of complete strangers. So send me your photos please! :)

Working on this one was a bit hard. I hardly ever do faces expressing a strong emotion and this was a reminder that I need to do more of them. I think the girl looks more scared than happy in my painting... And I can't even put my finger on what exactly is wrong. Maybe I'll do a drawing next time - but then it wouldn't be one of my 30 (35 or 40 in this case) minute portraits anymore.

A Portrait A Day 6 - Angela (using gel medium with watercolor)

Watercolor on Canson Montval CP 140lb, treated with acrylic gloss gel medium in some areas. 9x12". Photo reference: Angela from Julia Kay's Portrait Party.

For those interested to know what "treated with acrylic gloss gel medium" means, here is what happened. After I decided on the composition, I wanted some extra texture in her hair. I accomplished that by taking some gel medium and brushing it on the blank sheet of paper with a 1" bristle brush. You can see the lines in the upper and lower left and grain throughout the painting. The lines are the result of a little more medium on the brush; the grain effect happens when you drag an almost dry brush across the paper and the medium catches only the very top of the paper grain.

I uploaded a larger than usual image for you to see the texture close-up. Needless to say, I would be very upset if somebody used this image for their own commercial purposes. So don't :).