Working on Me and Jess

No really. Paintings of us. You didn’t think that I was going to get all syrupy and talk about how awesome I think she is did you?

It was funny this morning because I got to class and couldn’t find me. I wasn’t where I had left me and it took me some looking before I found where someone had moved me to.

I don’t think I will do anymore self portraits, this is really weird.

So this is where we left off last week: Steve came by and showed me where he wanted some more darks put in and mixed a suggested tone up for me of what he wanted me to work with. He dropped it in a couple of places: We talked about some various strategies and he left me to my own devices: Not wanting to overwork it or anything I set it (me) aside to work on Jess. I had started this piece when Off the Map was doing their Goddess show. I had intended to make Jessie a Goddess – Using the close up of her face in kind of cloud type thing and then making a landscape below her. I decided that there really wasn’t enough room below her to pull of the transition and there was too much ~~self imposed~~ pressure to make it look like her. So I set it aside for when I felt more comfortable working on a portrait. It seemed like today would be a good day and so this is what is (she) looked like before I started today: You can see where I was trying to put the mountains and valley in below her (and why that probably wasn’t going to work). First thing to do was to wipe out the landscape and then when I am especially intimidated the next step is to just go ahead and do something drastic. Even if it is wrong, it is still a big step: and then to start to fix it…. Steve came by and had afew suggestions on my self portrait the biggest one being that the hair has gotten too brush-strokey. I’m going to leave that on there for him to look at over the week and went back into working on Jess. I didn’t have a lot of time left but was trying to make more of a transformation on the skin tones. I took her home to hopefully get a chance to work some more on while the paint is still wet. Hopefully I will be able to steal some time in between other projects. Tonight is figure drawing class and I am hoping to be able to go since I missed it last week.