Roughly about a month ago, I was commissioned to do a
portrait of a father and daughter. No problem, portraits is what I do best. I
began this project super confident just doing a quick sketch, not really
studying the subjects, because hey, this should be no problem right, I got
this. I moved right to drawing on the canvas maybe 10 minutes after the sketch
and began painting all in the same day. Everything was smooth sailing. I
started with the father because I figured he would be the hardest so I wanted
to get his portion of the painting taken care of and by the time I reached the
daughter, everything should be good to go. In a breeze, I completed the father,
I noticed that he was a slightly smaller in comparison to the scale of the
reference photo but he looked awesome. Everything was working out great and
soon I was working on the daughter. I started with what I considered to be the
most challenging part of her portrait, which was her outreached hand, and that
was done in a flash, now for the icing on the cake; the face.
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| Original Canvas drawing ©2014 B. Lewis |
I began painting the face in my usual sort way of laying
down colors until I saw structures emerge. As I continued to paint, I noticed
that something was terribly off about this portrait. The father looked great,
the hand and dress were awesome, but the little girl’s face just didn’t match
up, even taking into account one’s style in creating, this just didn’t look
right. I kept toiling along, saying to myself, ‘just give it a little more
time, it’ll all come together.’ In this case, for some odd reason that I still
can’t figure out, it didn’t. Hours and hours poured into painting and
repainting this little girl’s face and it didn’t look like her photo (not in a
‘this isn’t photo realistic kind of way) it looked like a completely different
person.
12 hours into this painting, I decided to complete the
background and see how it all looked as a unit. It was a well-painted portrait
and I had a choice, say what the heck and turn in the portrait or attempt to
correct this situation. The accuracy was so far off that I couldn’t present it
to the client. My decision: Start from scratch.
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| Grid Sketch ©2014 B. Lewis |
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| Grid on Canvas ©2014 B. Lewis |
This time, I decided to draw this portrait using the grid
system, which I used in the previous painting. In this way, I could capture the
subjects much more accurately. 1 week later (in roughly 8 hours), I completed
the portrait to my satisfaction.
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| Final Portrait "Just Us" ©2014 B. Lewis |
So what was the trouble you ask? Why was this painting so
much harder than ones before? I’ve pondered this question and have come to the
realization that because I don’t practice as I should, don’t really keep a
sketchbook, don’t paint as often as I should, I had a much harder time than,
when I take my craft seriously and give it my all. The purpose of the B90x
challenge was to eliminate the chances of something like this happening but I
burnt out extremely fast with b90x, not totally sure why, but maybe setting
smaller more attainable goals may work best for me. If it’s only setting aside
an hour a day to practice, I think that’ll be beneficial to my art.
All in all, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome of this
portrait. It really turned out nice and I learned a pretty valuable lesson:
practice definitely makes perfect. So what’s next for BNZY? Well we’ll just have to see……^_^
In the mean time, check out the time lapse video of "Just Us":
