So, five portraits so far, four glass paint hybrids, one more of a regular wood based portrait.

I’ve been experimenting with backgrounds. The first portrait (of Jonathan) I made sort of a vague version of what was actually there. In the last portrait, I took out some of the complications of what was there to just have an all red background.

This one, I wanted to just feel it out. I’ve been working with a pallette knife more, so I used that and brushstrokes to finish out the background. I also did a lot of brush cleaning on the portrait, which I’m likely going to do in the future. I think it leads to happy accidents at a higher rate, and I think if I expand my use of adding random paint to portraits it could shake up my formula a little bit.

The colors on the face are definitely a red/green interplay, which I think worked relatively well. My goals is to include color relationships in spaces that are perceived as neutral to create more depth and action. It’s like turning a bleached flour recipe whole wheat- you get the actual content back, actual calories.

I have a couple more portraits I’d like to do, but the pandemic is making it hard to see people and get their pictures. I still don’t want to paint off of someone else’s photo, so I guess I have to wait. I’ve been working on Braddock Space Station, which I posted on instagram- check it out:

I’ve been building the arms out slowly. I’ll share the finished picture, of course. I’ve been working slow after having a second kid, so I wanted to put something up and I figured sketches were all right for now.

More soon.