A Portrait A Day 35 - Egyptian

Watercolor on Arches CP 140 lb, 9x12". The wonderful reference photo is by Patrick Hedges for WetCanvas reference library. I already painted a portrait from one of Patrick's photographs, a Himba woman.

I was very tempted to keep working on this painting. To get into all the little details - the wrinkles, the hairs, the subtle changes in his skin color...but I need to move on to the next portrait! :)

Oh, and see that new signature in the lower right corner? You might not know it's new, but this is something I learned at the Art Expo in Pasadena this year: SIGN YOUR NAME. Your name is your brand, your stamp of approval, and it adds value to your work. Several people at arts&crafts fairs asked me about my cryptic little hieroglyph that I signed my paintings with. One actually asked IF  I sign my paintings and when I said, "Yes, right here!" he seemed a bit perplexed and tried to make out what it stood for...Anyway, now, hopefully, everyone will be able to see that it's my name I'm signing my paintings with :)

Yosemite watercolor on gesso

Yosemite, where I have never been. 8x10, gesso applied with a painting knife and when I broke the painting knife, with a butter knife :).  The paper is a piece of Fabriano rough that I've had for a while. It feels like it has close to zero sizing, which was all the more reason to try gesso.

A Portrait A Day 34 - Violinist WIP

Watercolor, somewhere around 11x14. Wanted to have him emerge out of a very dark background but overdid it...Considering maybe reworking some areas over gesso.

A Portrait A Day 33 - Magdalena

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12. I painted this portrait for Andy Donohue from Julia Kay's Portrait Party.  Magdalena is his girlfriend and her birthday is coming up. Andy asked people in the portrait party if they could paint/draw Magdalena and I agreed. This was fun to paint! The reference photo is very interesting and has a high resolution. I had a good idea of what I wanted the painting to look like and I did most of it wet-into-wet, defining the sunglasses a bit more than everything else at the very end. I like it.

Here is a detail of this painting:

View fullsize

magdalena day 33 detail

And Happy Birthday to Magdalena, whenever it is! Sto lat!

A Portrait A Day 32 - Olivia

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Olivia is the granddaughter of another friend of Sandra's . She is 14 or 15 months old and she likes to play peek-a-boo :)

On a different note, I just learned about Yosemite Renaissance Competition about a week ago and was working on a painting I wanted to submit. Well, it's not happening because the digital entries are supposed to be received by mail no later than November 13. Ah well, next year. I'll post the painting a little later.

I am looking forward to this long weekend. My husband is at home and I appreciate having another adult to deal with our adorable, inquisitive and lately very needy almost 15-month old son. Maybe i will even get some art done.

A Portrait A Day 31 - Benedicte

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference photo: Bénédicte Delachanal of Julia Kay's Portrait Party.

A Portrait A Day 30 - Abrianna the Conqueress of Glaciers

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Abrianna is my neighbor who likes to take pictures and climb glaciers.

This painting is pretty much the opposite of the last one. I went against my intuition and kept working after I should have stopped. It has more depth and color than it would if I did stop when I wanted to (at about 15-20 minutes of painting) but it looks tired. On the other hand, tired is what people must be when they get to the top of a mountain ;)

A Portrait A Day 29

This is very unlike most of my portraits - but I really felt that one wash was enough and that I would kill it if I went any further. I don't know this guy (which really helps as I don't have to stress about making the painting look exactly like him) - he is from a CD with pictures that my friend sent me some time ago.  Must be some friend of hers.

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Can you tell what's going on? That's all I wanted to say :)

Stig-Ove Sivertsen, Norwegian watercolor artist

I keep "finding" Scandinavian watercolor gems. Here is the newest addition to the Artist Website section of my recommended links: S.O.Sivertsen

Another jewel from Sivertsen's website is this beautiful video that gives you a peek into why the process of working with watercolor is so exciting and addicting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVBTfew3e3M

It almost doesn't matter what the end result is. You can just watch it move, bleed and blend for hours...

Nice soundtrack, too. Some Norwegian Radiohead :) Correction: Icelandic Radiohead (Wikipedia told me so). Sigur Ros.

Oh, and the other video on his website "is not available in my country."  Thanks so much, Sony.

A Portrait A Day 28 - 1900s Man

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference image: Portrait of a young man from the Powerhouse Museum Collection. A wonderful photograph, do take a look.

A Portrait A Day 27 - Molly and a watercolor book review

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12." Reference photo is Molly Peck of Julia Kay's Portrait Party. As you can see, 95% of this painting were done wet-into-wet. I was (and still am) very inspired by a fantastic book:

Wet-on-Wet Watercolour Painting: A Complete Guide to Techniques and Materials [Paperback]

New Holland

Buy on Amazon

Ewa Karpinska takes the mystery out of the "difficult" medium and explains how to achieve the effects you want to see in your watercolor painting. She offers a systematic approach to wet-into-wet watercolor painting that makes sense. She breaks the "water cycle" (when water is applied to paper) down into seven stages: lens, mirror, shiny, semi-matt, cool matt, dry matt, and dry (only the five stages in between "lens" and "dry" are relevant to wet-into-wet painting). Using three different consistencies of paint (dilute, creamy, and pasty) and five color application methods (dropping in, tilting support, "skating", drawing, and "keeping a drop on a leash") she gives the reader 5 x 3 x 5 minus the incompatible combinations (like dry matt and tilting) = around 45 recipes for wet-into-wet effects.

Of course, the success of these recipes depend on variables like timing, amount of water, amount of pigment, and humidity. You still have to figure out the right moments for the right actions, and master the elusive medium by practice - but if you need to understand how it all works first, this book is great.

I was actually a little turned off by the cover when I was buying the book online, but as it was recommended to me by an artist I admire (Jean Haines), I went ahead and got it. And I am so glad I did! There are wonderful, dreamy paintings by Karpinska inside and several step-by-step tutorials as well.

Here is a brief demystification of wet-into-wet watercolor techniques at Handprint.com.

A Portrait A Day 26 - Lorna

Reference photo is my friend Lorna.  She is originally from Costa Rica and we met during both of our first years in the U.S., at an ESL class. Unfortunately, the painting doesn't look like her, even after numerous reworkings (if you look close, you can see areas of diluted gesso here and there). I guess I'll have to paint another one some time and aim for more resemblance!

Speaking of years in the U.S., yesterday was my 7-year move-i-versary (thanks Genevieve for another made-up word I can add to my vocabulary ;)) It feels so strange.

San Miguel de Allende - October Virtual Paintout

Here I used one of the four brushes that my dear husband brought me from Japan. I'm sure there's a name for this kind of brush but I don't know it :) It has stiffer, longer hair in the center and softer, short light hair (goat?) on the outside. The variety in the hair length and stiffness adds variety to the brushstrokes. A rather interesting tool :)

Don't forget to take a look at all the wonderful entries for this beautiful, colorful city at the Virtual Paintout blog!

Blacksmith watercolor - finished!

12x16", watercolor with touches of gesso on Arches CP 140lb. I'm done and I'm glad I haven't overworked it. But I keep thinking that the background on the right should be darker. What do you think?

For comparison, here is what it looked like before gesso touch-ups . That post also has a link to the reference photos that I uploaded to WetCanvas reference library. Please feel free to use them for your projects :)

In case anyone was wondering what happened to me, I am quite well and keeping up with the Portrait A Day project. I am also a mom of a 14-month old boy, who takes a little too much time per pound of weight :) I have about 6-7 posts worth of material (including some watercolor book reviews) that I will try to post soon. Stay tuned!

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 :)

I'm back and I have some figures :)

I am officially back! Had an okay visit in Sacramento, two highlights of which were a figure drawing session (thanks to Sandra!!)  and the Second Saturday Art Walk. It was my first live figure drawing (or painting, in my case) session ever. I am completely hooked now and intensely suffering at the lack of anything like that here in the high desert. Here are some of the results:

brooke 2

brooke 3

brooke 4

brooke 5

12x16 watercolor on paper.

There were some seriously talented and skilled people there. I only hope that I'll get to their level when I get to their age! :)

Second Saturday wasn't that great but it was something. Saw some new works by Bernie Weston and they were nice. He is still very affordable, so all you collectors out there should hurry up and collect :) I was hoping that the gallery still had some of his smaller 8x8" paintings that I saw last time (something I could afford) but they weren't there anymore.

As usual, I had grand plans for all my "free" time, and as usual, the free time didn't show up. In Russian, there is an expression, "to divide the skin of an unkilled bear" - for which I don't know a similar English expression. It means to make plans for resources that are not yet in your hands...Anyway, I'm back, and the portrait-a-day project is restarting tomorrow!

Figures by Kristina Laurendi Havens

People sometimes ask me how to get "flesh color." My answer varies based on whether I want to enlighten them, get into a discussion, or move on to something else. So...unless you are talking about pantyhose, I think that there is no such thing as flesh color. If you don't believe me, check out figure paintings by Kristina Laurendi Havens.

I don't remember how I came across Kristina's work - I think she was featured on Etsy.com blog. Speaking of Etsy, Kristina is having a 30% sale at her Etsy shop, check it out: http://www.etsy.com/shop/krystyna81

She also keeps a very interesting blog: http://krystyna81.blogspot.com/, has a website:  http://www.studio81.biz/, facebook page, and twitter account. Oh, and her flickr stream is full of beautiful art! Enjoy!

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.