4 paintings for four 8-year-olds

A few years ago I started a tradition of doing a little painting for each of my nieces and nephews when they turn eight years old. I got behind last year and just had two more nephews turn eight this spring so I took a couple days last week to catch up and get their paintings done.

It was actually quite fun doing some paintings outside of my school assignments. It was liberating not having to make them PERFECT...I just stopped when I thought they looked good. It was also satisfying finishing them in such a short amount of time, which doesn't happen with my assignments.

These paintings are each about 6-8 inches wide. Cute little things.

Fleshy attempt...

This is my first attempt at painting flesh (in color) in the last three years since I started at the Academy. The painting is not done, but I thought I'd post my progress to see how much I improve in the coming months. I'm trying to see the different temperature shifts in the skin, which is fairly challenging. There's a lot to think about, but painting with color is a lot of fun!

A week later:

Portrait of Claudia

Last week I finished a portrait of my friend Claudia. I started it in the fall and we finally set a time for her to come sit for me again at the studio so I could finish. Thanks, Claudia!

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

Color, here I come!!!

I am pleased to announce that I have advanced to painting in color for my assignments at the Hein Academy of Art! I'm finally a big kid and get to use the color paints! This honor has been a long time coming. I started my first assignment last Friday and, ironically, Jeff assigned me the task of painting a white cast. Some of the other students were teasing me that I'm finally in color and I have to paint something white! But, as Jeff explained, there is a lot of color and temperature variations, even in white. To make it more interesting I added a red table cloth beneath it so we get some reflected color on the object.

On Friday I basically drew the object to this point:

Then I started adding color to the light side of the face and asked Jeff if he'd do a demonstration on my painting so I could see how to approach it. Here is the product of his 30-40 minute demo:

I had to start over after that since he did so much of it, but I've been using his demo as a reference to help me along the way. The colors he used on the shadow side of the face were much warmer than I would have chosen. I'll let you know how it goes!

Model Painting

This is a painting from our live model sessions a couple months ago. We generally have the same model and pose for 4 weeks: three 3 hour sessions per week, which equals out to about 36 hours. But the model will generally pose for 20-30 minutes at a time then take a 5-10 minute break. So I would guess I spent closer to 24 hours on this painting.

Dream the impossible dream..

This is my most recently finished painting. I passed it off on Friday and I''m excited to be moving on to the next project. The picture looked a lot better on my phone so you'll have to take my word that it looks much better in real life.

The figures in this painting are wooden sculptures that I bought in Ecuador 13 years ago. The characters are Don Quixote and his side kick, Sancho Panza. In one scene of the story Don Quixote attacks a windmill, thinking it is a monster, and he breaks his spear. If you look closely you'll see that Don Quixote is holding a broken spear with the top half sitting on the ground in front of him...the spear of this sculpture actually snapped when I brought it back from Ecuador in my luggage. It was just a happy coincidence that it fits along nicely with the story :)