Friday night , nothing to do, nowhere to go, I started a painting. A burst of creative energy came over me and I painted for hours, upon hours. What luck that my sleeplessness leads to these "painting storms", sleep has eluded me for weeks. Normally this might cause me distress, but when inspiration strikes I don't argue. A self portrait I decided, because if I can't paint myself then I really don't have any business painting portraits. I found a new twist to an already familiar technique in a water color book I took out from the library. You begin with a wash of color and then build all of your tone and value using varying degrees of the same wash color. Gradually building the image and adding more color. I intended for the wash to be a skintone, it was.. and then somehow it became a lovely bubble gum pink. Once all was said and done I had a very nice bubble gum pink underpainting of myself. Now what.. Brown! Brown? Really Erin... bound to be a muddy mess. I was mistaken,brown gave it some warmth, then I got carried away and voila. My beautiful bubble gum pink underpainting became a muddled brown cartoon version of myself. In a moment of impatience I decided to paint in my lip and eye color and get a glimpse of how it might look later on. Sigh.... It's still not quite finished, and it's yet to be seen how I will feel about it in the end. If I'm feeling brave I'll post pictures tomorrow.
This one is still a work in progress.
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