Friday, June 24, 2011

First Attempt - Liberace










This was my first painting from the Liberace workshop. I remember thinking that I did this quickly in an hour or two, but I didn't. I forgot a whole day. How do you forget a whole day? So, in recalculating,I think I took about 5 hours. I really should have gotten further along.



It was fun to paint him. Loved the long hair and with the costume, he really looked like a gentlemen from Velasquez's time. His photograph here is not the view I had from my position, but I liked it better, I had more of a profile, obviously.



I feel I made the core light and shadow to high in value. As a result, I didn't have much room for variance without going darker in large areas, which is way harder than it sounds. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the limited "earthy" palette. As stated before, it makes everything look more like a monochromatic study. I have to say on this painting, my favority is the nose. I followed the Burt Silverman hot-nose-underpainting thing and it totally worked to make the nose realistic.



I got two pieces of advice from Rob: one, to make the nose stronger as I lost the shape when I blocked-in the paint. I made the nose edge extremely sharp as a response. The other piece of advice was to make the lip stronger, I really didn't know what that meant, but I repainted it and Rob said--it was right.


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