Trying to get back into painting with acrylics. Its a tough process, let me tell you. With this particular painting, I decided not to do smooth blends of colors and values. Rather, the paint was applied with a more deliberate separation between colors, thereby allowing "the eye" to do the blending.
I think I was moderately successful in my attempt, although I think when painted this way, the mid-to-high-tones look like the flash of a camera is striking the person's face. In this case, it was, as I was working from a combination of memory and a crappy 3x5" computer printout from a digital camera. This person is rather dark skinned, but I made him waaaayyyy too red. Looks like he just stepped off the beach.
Although awkward-looking, this painting has inspired me to continue painting. I've been working with acrylics for a number of years now, but have only recently become "comfortable" with them. I would much rather paint with oil. However, due to cost issues, time to dry and overall messiness, oils are just not in the cards right now. Oils are for when you have your own shed in the back of the house that is yours to do whatever you please and you can make a huge shitstorm mess and never clean it up and no one cares. Regardless of medium or how much formal training you have had, painting is an intensely personal process that can not be fully taught to anyone. It's up to you to decide what you feel is working and what is not. There is no step-by-step. You need to be in constant communication with the medium. Work WITH it, don't force it. If something you have been taught is not working for you, SCRAP IT.
More later.
1 comment:
Now that you mention it, I don't even know if I can recall ever seeing you actually work in acrylics...huh!
I think this is a nice painting -- I can see what you mean by the 'flash on the face' thing, but I don't think it's that big of a deal or distraction. You can always work from nice naturally lit stuff next time, because crappy 3x5 printouts are artistically frustrating in many ways. ; )
I think that you should push your 'let the eye blend it' technique even more by using more sculptural and textural strokes and even fewer palette blended colors and 'smooth' strokes. It's a nice painting, but it's kind of flat (maybe what you were going for...) especially on his shirt, hair and shadows. I think his nose/cheek area is the best and most interesting area of the painting right now. Just an opinion though...keep them coming' on!
Now all this paint talk makes me want to paint again. Thanks for the inspiration!
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