Day 5 - All Smiles

All Smiles, Acrylic on Gessoed Mat Board, 10"x7"

Day 5 - 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

I struggled with this one. I started with an Indian yellow under-painting. Then I blocked in the big shapes using black and white (I took a photo to show what I mean by that). Finally, I added the local color and the details. As with many good photos of people (read properly exposed, etc.), the photo for this lady had very few distinct shadows and the value range was pretty tight. Using Photoshop, I increased the contrast and decreased the brightness to better delineate the shapes. That made it a bit easier to see the shapes and to determine what areas needed to be darker or more intensely colored.

When I do the block-in, I try to get the shapes and values and a good sense of the facial expression. That helps me stay on track as I paint the subtleties in the final layers. In this painting, I think I lost some of the joy in the original - the block-in looks more playful and less posed than the final rendering. Something to work on.