You know you're a child of the 80's if...

You know you're a child of the 80's if you recognize and/or played with any of these dolls: Rose Petal, Rainbow Brite or a Cabbage Patch Doll (this one was homemade by my neighbor).

The last project I did before advancing to color at the Hein Academy was this series of childhood toys. I thought it would be fun to do portraits of my favorite dolls and I'm trying to get faster at painting portraits so I was practicing speed and accuracy on these. I did paint these in color, but they were monochromatic so I was still approaching them as I did the black and white paintings.

My paintings tend to shrink as I paint, which can be a problem when laying out a composition, especially if it's a multi-figure painting, so I was also practicing keeping the face the same size I started at: 6 inches tall. It was a struggle, especially on the Rainbow Brite painting. I wrestled with myself for a few hours, trying to restrain myself from shortening the head and force myself to widen the face, even when it didn't feel correct. I finally got it....well, to be completely honest, they all shrunk to about 5.75 inches, but I'm going to let that slide. It's interesting to see how much bigger the cabbage patch doll's face looks than the other two but their heads are the same height from the chin to the top of the head (the cabbage patch is actually .25" shorter). The size and placement of the features is what makes them appear different sizes.

Rose Petal, 23 hours

Rainbow Brite, 26.5 hours

Cabbage Patch Doll, 27.5 hours