Painting Different Folks

This is my portrait for the current Different Strokes From Different Folks challenge. We were paired anonymously with another artist and given their photo. Since no one was going to see the reference photos, we could free ourselves up and use unusual colors or not even worry about getting a good likeness. Sounded like wild and crazy fun to me.

I had just finished rereading “Harley Brown’s eternal truths for every artist” when I received my photo reference, so I grabbed a piece of suede matboard and smeared pastel over it to “show it who’s boss,” as Harley advised. I was really impressed with myself for a couple of seconds, but I had no idea what to do next (I thought I had learned something reading that book, but it’s so easy to get distracted by the pictures). So I decided to block in the shapes as usual, but do it colorfully with blues, greens, yellows and oranges. Am I wild and crazy or what? It didn’t last long, though.

Here’s what I learned about myself: I have to get a good likeness. I can’t not do it. It makes me crazy. I started layering on normal colors and turned it upside down to check my proportions. Pretty soon my portrait was looking like the original photo. Just to compensate for my boringness, I put some wild color into the background. Plus, I’m slightly off and I’m not even going to correct it. Yep, that’s me, living on the edge.

10”x8”
Soft Pastel on Suede Matboard

One thing that did stick with me from Harley's book was this: "You can't go looking for style."