This is the photo that made me decide I wanted to paint a portrait for my daughter-in-law. She took it shortly after bringing my latest grandchild home (he’s now 7).

I loved this photo instantly and knew I wanted to paint it eventually. It was the lighting and the color palette that attracted me the most. As we were coming up to Thanksgiving and Christmas would follow, I decided it was time. I should have decided I few months earlier. The problem was that even though I loved the photo, I also wanted my daughter-in-law in it. After all she had given us a most wonderful gift 7 years ago. I’ve also always been intrigued by “Madonna and Child” works of art. Maybe because I was never a mother myself.

Anyway, there was a lot of work to be done long before I put paint brush to paper. I scoured my photos for one of L (my daughter-in-law) that would fit within the picture. I started off with some other ones, but couldn’t make them work. I found one from my grandsons first Christmas with a pose that would make sense along side the original. Next up I’ll show you the composite work I did in Photoshop Elements.

The thing about portraits is, that the things that make us look “like us” are often tiny incremental differences. My lips are just a wee bit thinner than others (less than an eighth of an inch in some cases). My mouths static state is turned down, others are turned up. Get even one of those things wrong and all of a sudden that portrait doesn’t look like you! I’ve done very few portraits of other people. Mostly I’ve tried capturing my mother and I’ve failed in all those attempts (in oil, in clay, and in acrylic). It hasn’t stopped me from trying again, though!

I definitely believe in stretching yourself once in a while. After all how can you know your limits if you don’t test them? How do you know if you’re good or bad at something if you don’t try it? How do you know you’re not just resting on your laurels?

I’ve been working on a piece for several weeks now and have had a challenge every step of the way. This is far outside my wheelhouse. The thing is, I’m also learning things that could be applied inside my wheelhouse. I can’t show you all my steps along the way until after Christmas, since this will hopefully be a gift for someone. That all depends on how it turns out, of course.

In the mean time here are some pictures of my favorite brushes and the ones I used for most of last months 30 day challenge

I finished my last piece for my November challenge “A Painting a Day”……which turned into “Painting Everyday”……Which didn’t actually happen. I missed some days, but on some days, I painted 3 paintings. Also, once I decided to add some more complicated paintings, there was no way I was going to be able to properly finish them in one day. I’m pretty damned happy with it!

Next month I hope to draw every day. I’ve neglected this skill and when you think about it, it is the absolute basis of all art. Though I may have to work harder to say that includes Abstract Art…… A Topic for Another post.

Plus if you don’t draw everyday, your eye hand coordination virtual disappears.

These are phase 4 and 5. I wonder if non-artists think we sit down and produce a whole painting in a day. That does happen; in fact I did one of my favorite pieces in 2 hours at 2am. I suppose someone would say I was “in the zone’. You can see the picture under Portfolio/Watercolors. It of a lighthouse. I don’t want to detract from this current project. I suspect this will be finished tomorrow.

Well actually since I started this one a few weeks ago, it’s actually 3 days worth of painting. You’ll have to look back at my other post to see what Phase 1 looked like. I so love watching how a piece evolves. Sometimes it’s predictable and sometimes a painting will take a turn I didn’t expect.

Well that really says it all. I’m done with this one. I will look at it about a month from now and see If I think I can improve it by tweaking it. I just shouldn’t have used such cheap paper. Tomorrow it will be back to some easy things to finish out the monthly challenge. I have one or two or three pieces I have to work on for holiday presents. The original photo is below the painting.

Okay so I took a few days off from my daily painting challenge. Since there were a couple of days where I did 3 paintings a day I decided I was allowed. After painting every day for two weeks I actually missed it when I didn’t.

However, this was a hard one! I only worked on the water and the pads again. There are certain things that were particularly difficult to capture. On the right side the middle pad has a puddle of water in its center and I couldn’t quite get it. I’m afraid I’ve now lost the “freshness” that I had at the start. I will continue. I believe I shall be able to finish it tomorrow by finalizing the star, the Lily itself.

I was pretty tired when I got home from one of my favorite art events : CoRK Open Studios. It’s always very inspiring and I love finding excellent art – especially by younger artists that I hadn’t met yet. I also invariably get into some very very interesting conversations. After a day full of high energy, I wasn’t sure I could manage much painting. Once I got started, though I enjoyed myself and stuck with it for a couple of hours

Layer by layer it’s coming along. I expect this one will take about 2 more days maybe 3. I’m liking it, so I definitely don’t want to rush it. I worked on the greens mostly. A lot of people think it is one of the hardest colors to work with. I feel comfortable with it, myself. I just make sure not to use any of them straight out of the tube. I always add some red, yellow or blue.

Layer by layer it’s coming along. Some art takes more time than others. Actually, I guess I should say more immediate time than others, because it all takes the time it takes for you to have learned all the skills, elements, principles, tips and tricks involved. I’ve been learning since I was a child of 6 or so. Some of the abstracts I’ve done recently have taken me between 45 minutes to hour and a half. This first one has taken me 3 days, so far. The next one, the Bird of Paradise will probably take me as long.