A Face and Its Remnants (9.11.2016)

After the change with yesterday's face in doing a digital piece, I'm back to mixed media. As you can probably see from the sporadic nature of this blog, I don't like to feel tied down to one medium when it comes to my artwork. I feel like I learn more when I'm constantly learning and practicing new things. 

However, with this piece in particular, I'm working on cardboard again, and for this series in particular I'm sort of attempting to stay with a vaguely similar style for the pieces. This is the first time I've really worked in a series like this (and there's a bit of a secret to it, I'd be curious to see who'll guess first), so I'm really excited about it. 

I'm also particularly happy with today's face (face 12/29 for 29 Faces), so without further ado, let's move on to talking about it.

• I'm sort of in love with the tones in this face. I used a lot of pinks and yellows and blended with brown and just the tiniest bit of white. After the tones in the face had started to come along, I didn't really feel the need to brighten it up too much. It just felt like if I added anything too crazy, it'd be overwhelming. So, I stuck with muted colors overall, adding a few pops of orange in her lips and the flower. The colors are pretty much my favorite part of this painting.
• In the photo on the left, you can see the hairstyle a bit better. It didn't turn out quite as I was expecting, but I'm okay with it. However, the hairstyle was the inspiration for the piece - my sister was wearing her hair like this the other day and I couldn't resist.
• Then we come to the right hand photo. The texture here is crazy. I'm pretty sure that every time I paint on cardboard I comment on the amazing texture, but I just can't help myself. It's incredibly fun to mess around with, and I think everyone should try it at least once. We all have boxes lying around that are waiting to be thrown away - why not cut one down and give it a go?

 I'm not really going to expand on these photographs too much, but they're both from my Instagram story; if you're interested in seeing more progress shots, I've been posting a lot of them there lately.

• As you can see, the first photograph depicts my rough sketch - and when I say rough, I mean extremely rough. My sketches are purely guidelines, I don't try to overthink it too much. In the long run, they're going to be mostly painted over anyways, so I can make adjustments with paint.
• The second photo is after some paint had already been applied. Typically I'll go over the skin tones again with a second pencil outline, more defined and to give me a chance to actually outline with the black paint like I've been doing for this series.

The second mixed media piece I have to share with you guys today is probably the first finished art journal page I've actually done since I started the 29 Faces challenge (you can see the traces of my first face on the edge of the page above).

Essentially, it went something like this. 

Lately, once I'm finished painting faces, I have a random assortment of colors on my palette, since it's much easier to apply them there when I'm painting a portrait. A lot of time this leftover paint goes to waste, since I don't always use it and it dries out. I was getting tired of that happening, so I decided to create a journal page to use it all up. 

Since the  colors I used for the face were very autumn-like, I decided that it might be fun to participate in the "colors of autumn" challenge over at Stamps and Stencils. So that's what this page was created for!

• When I was sorting through some of my art supplied recently, I found some old rubber stamps I had forgotten I owned, the leaves stamped throughout the page. Only one is clearly visible, but there is a second, more narrow leaf stamp you can see if you look closely.
• In the photo on the left, you can see one of my favorite little portions of the page. Here, the layers haven't been built up as much as in some other areas of the page, and the lines of the composition book and some pencil doodles I did on the very first layer shine through.
• On the right, you can see a bit of a cluster towards the bottom of the page. I love this little section too - I thought this page was a lot of fun to create. There are book pages torn and glued to the background, splatters, Prismacolor NuPastels (which I recently rediscovered in my stash and am enjoying experimenting with again), and more. 
• The quote reads "You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself."

The photos above really just depict closer views of the above photographs, so the descriptions are the same. That doesn't change the fact that I love them!

One last thing before I go. I have a Facebook page where I've been sharing a lot of what I do here, but I feel like a Facebook group has so much more potential than that. So here's my question - do any of you have anything that you love to see? Maybe prompts, discussion questions, or anything along that vein that you'd like to participate in? Because I honestly think it could be a lot of fun.

At any rate, I hope you all enjoyed this post and I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

The Other Half (9.9.2016)

I'm officially back with another face for the 29 Faces challenge!  I keep saying this, and I'm sure I will continue to say it - this has been an incredibly fun process for me. I entirely enjoy the feeling of developing ideas in this manner. The more faces I paint, the more ideas I seem to have. Sure, some of the faces are better than others, but that's part of the fun of it all for me. 

So, without further ado, onto today's face!

 As you can see in the very first photo, this was done on the same piece of cardboard as yesterday's piece. Though I may be playing around with some digital work tomorrow, expect a lot of cardboard experimentation in the near future - I've really been enjoying it!

• In this face, the thing that stands out to me the most is the tones in the skin. I went with a lot more orange, yellow and pink than I typically do (mixed in places with browns and whites), and I'm not sure what I think of the result. I think that it's different, and I do like it, but it's an experiment, to be sure.
• I am a big fan of this girl's hair in particular. I'm not sure what it is about it that I like so much, and I do feel as if it could use some touching up (maybe a few more white highlights), but in the long run, it's something I'm definitely happy with.
• In this photo, you can also see the scrap piece of paper I had tucked underneath of my cardboard while I was working. When I went to add color to the page, I would wipe excess paint on this paper - I think it serves as an interesting view of how the face was created!

• In the photo on the left, you cane see this girl's eyeliner, which I also like quite a bit. It was somewhat of an accident - I went to paint the line of the eye and my hand took it a little too far. Essentially it was a happy accident. 
• The left photo is probably one of my favorite sections of this little face. If you look closely, you can see some of the graphite shading I did on top of the acrylic paint around the eye area. I also love how the teal markings of the background overlap with her hair. As far as the background is concerned, I'm moving on for now though I may come back to it later.
• The right photo shows a bit of a better view of the textures of the piece - they're rougher, and the cardboard likes to suck up the paint, so you can see a lot of that as well. I love the lips in this piece; the color reminds me a lot of my own lipstick. You can also see where I went to put in an extra line for the area that separates the nose and the mouth and essentially pointed out that the nose was placed wrong. Whoops.

In the long run, I am happy with today's face. I think I'm starting to learn that faces are one of those things that I just need to relax abut. The more I worry about them, the worse I end up doing. Really, I'm better off just letting it flow, and critiquing the work afterwards in order to grow in the future. Here's to even better faces in the future!

Playing Catch Up (9.8.2016)

Due to a lot of things happening last night, it was impossible for me to post on here, as much as I wanted to. However, I still did manage to complete a face, so I had that going for me. Almost as a bonus for you guys, you get to see two faces today!

First and foremost, we have the face that I completed yesterday. This one is a little rough, and was done in colored pencils and graphite. 

This face in particular had unpromising beginnings, so in the end I'm happy with the way she turned out. Essentially, I began the very rough sketch in the dark in a moving car, so it was a little weird when it came to proportions. However, all things considered, I think she turned out very royal looking. 

Somewhere along the way, while I was coloring her, she began to remind me vaguely of Gwen from the television show Merlin - some of the influences started to work for me after that. I would still like to try this girl in particular again, perhaps digitally. We'll see what happens!

Now, we have today's face, which I am extremely happy with. 

I'm beginning to get to the point with painting faces where I'm getting more comfortable with it - it's almost soothing, actually. Sometimes things don't exactly turn out as I planned, but I'm trying to learn to be okay with that. For example, I know this girl's shoulder should be extended further out. However, for this concept to work, that would be impossible. And that's okay!

I took some influences from Tuesday's painted girl as the inspiration for this piece. Of course, there are many things that weren't even close to the same - for example, I didn't use any oil pastels at all in this painting, though the other face's skin tone was almost exclusively oil pastel.

• The main idea that I took from the other post was the dark black painted outlines around the entirety of the character. That was an extremely appealing aesthetic to me, and I felt the need to try to recreate it. Part of me feels like it's going to become a part of my style, though I'm not going to be attempting to nail anything down in stone. 
• In the left photo, you can see some of the finer details of this girl's eye. I'm particularly happy with this part of the painting, I think that the eyelashes turned out great and the color of the eye is extremely pretty. The finer details of the eye were done with a Sharpie pen (again, sometimes they're just great for the small things), but the majority of this face was done in acrylics and graphite pencil. 
• On the left, you can see some of the interesting textures I was able to achieve, especially in the neck area. I've never painted on cardboard before, and it was certainly a new experience (one that I enjoyed immensely and will have to experiment with in the future!).

 

•  In this first photo, you can see some of the better details of the cheek coloring, which I thought was nice. I was playing with some neon pink and trying to get it to blend - I think it did exactly what I wanted it to, luckily enough.
• In this final photo, there are several things that stand out to me. Quite obviously, the focus is on the hair, which is in a style very similar to my own (I think I might need to try thinking outside the box with my next hairstyle), but with highlights to match this girl's eyes. I like the texture that was achieved under the hairline, caused both in part by scratchy acrylic paint and by graphite pencil. The texture in her eye shadow is another added bonus.

In the long run, I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with these faces and playing around with new techniques and ideas - I hope all of you are enjoying following my journey as much as I am enjoying taking it. I love hearing from all of you in the comments, it honestly makes my day!

I hope you all have an amazing day, and I thank you all for visiting.