A few weeks back my favorite grandmom asked me to paint her a picture. She saw a couple of my illustrations and told me how happy she was that I got dad's skill. She asked if I can paint her anything with flowers on it. She's really feminine, my complete opposite but I love her just the same. Even if I got tons of jobs on my back, I just can't say no to her. And who am I to refuse to a queen's request?
So yesterday, I decided to work on it. I found a forgotten 8 x 10 canvas, stacked somewhere, primed black. It was supposed to be for an aztec design project, now it'll be for a girl and flowers so I have to make adjustments. Painting light colors on a black canvas can be a real pain in the *ss.
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| It's me, hello! |
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| The draft and a couple of materials that got me so poor. Haha! |
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A few points before we move on:
- I'm not an art student, I studied by myself, most of my knowledge are either second-hand, from the internet and experience. So I might've missed a hundred techniques as I paint, but I don't mind. Art is a free form. :)
- The photos may look slightly different from the others. I paint next to a huge window so external light affects the photo quality.
- Please, ignore the clutter. Haha.
Moving on. It took me while to decide which kind of flower to paint, a very crucial info I forgot to ask my client. After a couple of pondering minutes, I decided to go with cherry blossoms since Japan is really close to our hearts.
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| Mixing colors can be both fun and scary. Nailed it though, I think. Haha. |
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| By then I thought I'll just give up and throw the canvas outside my window. |
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| Done after almost an hour and a few tears. |
Drawing faces has been a challenge to me before. I was scared that I might have the "same face syndrome", gosh, they have it on Urban Dictionary. While I'm not really bothered by it, some harsh spectators can really slap it on my face.
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| This is the outline of my little lady's face. From here, it looks like she's from Hawaii. Haha. |
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Painting portraits isn't really my cup of tea, honestly, this is my first portrait painting. Well, you can't even call my girl a portrait since I didn't came up with a
really realistic face. The skin tones became a real challenge for me. I can make decent skin tones while painting digitally since CTRL Z is really handy and color swatches are readily available. Live painting it is another thing, I have to manually mix colors and decide carefully how much reds and siennas are necessary.
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| I was like, "Eff it, I'll just ditch the idea of real skin shadows." Haha. |
The eyes are my favorite parts to paint. I don't know, there's something about their shape, folds and the watery eyeballs.
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| Painting the eyebrows and eyeliner. Sorry for the wrong photo angle. |
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| The eyes from afar. I picked out brown since it's my eye color. |
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| Baby brown eyes. Haha. |
Next to the eyes, I love painting lips. While I take some time in forming a nice lip shape, I enjoy coloring it. I was so engrossed to doing it that I forgot to take some pictures.
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| Thank God for I came up with a cute face. Haha. |
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| Close up. I don't have freckles but I love putting them on my girls. They seem like stars. |
After painting her face, I suddenly got lost. I don't know what to do with her hair, let alone decide if she needed it since I like the minimalist approach. However, the queen might ask why my painting looks bald. So I figured I was just tired and decided to tuck in for the night and my girl shall have her hair tomorrow.
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Today, I have to drive my mom for some errands, while on the road an idea popped on my head: "
Why not teal?" After all it's my favorite color too.
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| Now she looked like a mermaid. Hahaha. I have to apologize for the camera angle. My acrylics are glossy so lights reflect on them. Or I'm just lazy. Haha. |
Last night the problem was her hair, now her hair looks blunt and empty. I considered placing clouds, weird shapes, raindrops, flowers and Jupiter knows what else on the length of her hair but they all seem wrong.
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| After a couple of good songs, I went with cherry blossom trees and stars. |
It feels so good to have this painting finished for my grandmom. The whole experience was so much fun and tiring. It's my first go on documenting my process and it's not even that detailed. I hope it's not that bad though. I just thought:
why not blog about it and have a good laugh in the future? And who knows, my kid (if ever I decided I need one, haha.) might want to see how I work too.
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| Flourish. 8x10. Acrylic on canvas. |
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BONUS VIDEO! Haha. Here are snippets of the process. Since it's my first art process blog post, please forgive me. :)
Audio: Sky Full of Stars (Instrumental) - Coldplay
