Art Journal Play - Seeing Faces

In case you hadn't figured it out already, I love to draw faces. That's been true since high school. I would lose myself sketching stylized faces. I went a very long time without putting pencil (or paint) to paper but never lost the pull to draw faces.

Having immersed myself back in art over the last year and a half has reminded me of that pull. I've taken various on-line art courses that have me drawing more and more faces, specifically I Heart Drawing by Jane Davenport. Love her, LOVE this course.

I have a couple of art journals going, and in most, I have half-finished backgrounds mostly the result of slapping my leftover paint on a page as not to waste it. This is one such page. I was flipping through the book, saw this page and thought it would be fun to paint a face over the top. I wish I'd gotten a shot before I worked on the face, but you can see quite a bit of it through the face.

I'm mesmerized by her. Sure, her eyes are a bit wonky and she's rather lopsided, but I think she's darling, if I do say so myself!

Finished – Untitled (for now) Woman

I finished it - finally! I wrote a WIP post way back in April (!) and am happy to say she's finally finished.

Some of the WIP:

(where I left off on the last post-following is later in the day after fixing her nose)

I anguished over where to go from just about the point I left her in late April. I knew I wanted paper flowers either in her hair or representing her hair, but kept putting off making the decision. I was afraid of "ruining" what I'd started.

So I made paper flowers.

Lots of paper flowers.

And after determining that I did NOT want her whole head covered in them, came up with a pleasing arrangement, took a photo so I'd know what I'd liked...

Then set about painting her hair. I also decided to add some stenciled, if illegible, words to the background. I just wanted to break things up a bit, add some more texture and interest, pull in more of the mixed media feel I was going for.

The inspiration photo I used showed some sort of barrette in her hair, so I fashioned one for my girl out of wire and a paper flower. I also added a wire "earring" to help tie things together.

The flower "eye" is made from light modeling paste and a flower stencil. I'm very pleased with how she came out even though I got very stuck for a long time. I needed to let go of feeling like I was going to "ruin" it or make a mistake. As Donna Downey says, "Forward motion." Just keep moving forward and the right things will emerge.

WIP—Gold Face

Here's one of my current WIP (12"x12"). Still lots of work to do on this. If it looks metallic to you, you're right! I put a thin layer of copper paint over the face and hair area just for the hell of it.

I'd intended for this to be more abstract, but it's coming out more literal. Her nose definitely needs more work. Right now it's way too "LaToya" for my tastes. I'll adjust the shading and make it closer to the inspiration photo I'm following.



I picked up this free wedding magazine at the grocery store. Lots of good face/flower/posing inspiration!



I don't know what I'm going to do with her hair, but I'll figure it out as I go along. I have no formal training with painting — ok, I had a random "painting and drawing" class in HS—so I'm pretty much winging this whole thing.

Evolution of a Face

One of the things I've heard from multiple artists is to use any leftover paint from one project and just slap it on a blank canvas, avoiding waste and getting a jumps start on your next canvas. This painting started out as one of those leftover paint canvases.

I don't have any photos of the origins of this painting, but it started out with some light blue, smears of bright yellow-green, various black swirly marks and random other bits of color. At that point, I kind of saw a face in the marks and quickly painted the outline and the hair line. I had leftover fluid acrylics in violet and turquoise, so those were added and I decided to run them with a couple spritz of water.

Which brings us here:


I added some shading on her neck, roughed in her features, and darkened the area behind her head on the right. I showed this to my husband, and he thought she looked a bit like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, so the next day, when I came back to the painting, I decided to give her bright orange hair.



I didn't like the placement of her nose, so I covered over the mark I'd made. I worked on her eyes and added various layers of red, orange, yellow and some magenta to her hair. I also swirled some violet in there as well. I took a spray bottle top, pushed it into her hair to pick up paint, and made the circle marks you see in the corners.

I was really liking where she was going, but went out of town for a few days so she sat about a week at this stage. When I got back from my trip (an art workshop I'll write about later), I was itching to paint again, so on Monday night, I decided to finish her up or at least come close.



I worked on defining her eyes, adding lots of shading to her face to bring out the features, added to her hair and decided to go with swirls. Lots of layering, little touches here and there and I decided to call her finished. I'm thrilled with how she turned out. It's my favorite painting to date. I just keep staring at her, hardly believing that *I* made her.