Temper Tantrums, House Guests, and the Flu

I haven't posted for over 2 weeks due to a temper tantrum, house guests, and the flu.  So, I'm not the one who was sick, but having a sick husband and kid distracted me from getting any painting done... or was it having house guests two weekends in a row.  Don't get me wrong...  both visits were lots of fun and I really appreciate friends and family travelling to visit us, but it meant getting the house "company clean" (which is quite different than our "regular clean") - twice!

I suppose if I'm honest,  illness and guests contributed to my procrastination, but the real reason I didn't paint was because I was having a temper tantrum. Let's just say you shouldn't wipe paint away with a cloth that has thinner on it.  Instead of removing the top layer of paint from the face, you will remove the entire face.  Bummer!  After making that blunder, I was really frustrated and needed to pout for a couple of weeks.  I'm over it now and have finished the underpainting to Peanut's angry portrait.

I having a little trouble getting the face right because so much of it is in shadow and I was working from a rather small photo.  Here is a little cheat that I sometimes use if I can't figure out where I'm going wrong.

I copy the photograph in black and white, adjusting the size of the face to be the same as in the painting.  I then slip the photo into a plastic sleeve and trace the major areas with a sharpie.

Once you remove the photo...  voila!  You've got a roadmap.  (I slipped a white paper in the sleeve just so that you could see the outline better.)

Using this as a quick guide let me to see that the face I painted was too squashed.  Her eyes needed to be higher and closer to the brows and her mouth needed to be brought down a bit.  They are unusually close together because she is tipping her face forward a bit.  I needed that facial tilt to add to her pouty face.





Here's her cute little face now...  ready for some color!