Julia Three Days Ago

Amazing! I’m on a roll! I’ve got 2 more squares done since I took this photograph of Julia on Friday, the twenty-fifth, and it looks as though I should be finished by this coming Friday, October 2nd. Interestingly, I’m not relying on a complete mapping in pencil within the grid as I normally do. Occasionally, I eyeball the brushwork. That has worked out especially well on the hair, Row A square 1, and Row B, square 1 with some dry brushing that looks almost like air brush.* That should make an interesting contrast to the “paint by number” mapping throughout the rest of the painting. I plan to do more of the same in future portraits.

*She reminds me of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," though she's reversed, and is just a portrait not a full figure. I'm certainly not comparing my work to the master, just saying that this pose of Julia reminds me of the master's painting.

Italian Renaissance.org at http://www.italianrenaissance.org/botticelli-birth-of-venus/, viewed Monday, September 28, 2015, 11:16 EDT.

Julia Roberts

I’ve begun work on the left panel of the “Characters Triptych”

The image shown here is the manqué (model) for the 3’ by 4’ last (left) panel in the triptych. The image for the manqué was created by distilling a number of photos found on the Internet into one, then playing with that image in Adobe Photoshop. I’ve been mapping the large canvas for the past week. Each 2” square in the manqué has been enlarged using pencil by a factor of 6 into the 12” squares on the canvas. I will begin mixing the basic colors for the image later today. They will be different from those in the manqué because I like to make sure that the enlarged image is removed more than one step from the manque. There will be about 12 basic colors. As I work during the next 3 weeks, additional colors will be mixed using the basic 12 plus the complementary color to each, white, and/or a dull black made by mixing the primary colors and magenta. If I finish mixing the basic colors, I will be ready to begin painting tomorrow.

I would like to be done with the 3rd panel by October 1st so I can take the entire triptych to Characters Pub in Lancaster, Pennsylvania rather than only the first 2 panels of Madonna and Johnny Depp.