EVALUATING THE EXPERIMENTS

I'm working on these small paintings a few minutes here and there around all the minutia of my day. I am getting anxious to spend considerably more serious time on a major painting. I am excited because I thought of what I want to do. The dark side of producing a painting that turns out to be a major piece and receives a lot of attention is the pressure to do it again! I feel like I've peaked! I was contemplating how to photograph the drawing that will be in the next Strokes of Genius 2 book and I realized I never did a painting of this image, only the drawing. I think it should make an interesting painting. That will be my next project. I am going to change the format a bit. I will post as I work on it.

In the meantime, I need to evaluate my little experiments. Today I worked on 3 more bozzettos, only completing this one. The others aren't worth wasting more paint on. It's not always a virtue to keep going. I once heard a wonderful expression: "When the horse dies, get off." I learned what I needed to with the unfinished last two. The texture was too overwhelming and unattractive for a portrait head. The one I completed (above) is too textural in the face as well. The stamps seem to have less contrast than the plastic squares. I think the acrylic gel gets down in the grooves of the pattern of the squares and deposits too much texture. It does make an interesting background, however. Scale plays a part. This size pattern on a much larger head will look somewhat different.

I changed the set of primaries on this last head to see what colors I could produce. New Gamboge, Ultramarine and Primary Red. Don't ask what Primary red is. It's a hue but not a pigment. I just go by the labels on the bottles. The red mixed with Ultramarine creates a purple that is close to brown, very rich and beautiful. Excellent skin tone for darker complexions.