Last autumn I painted two portraits of my boyfriend. The first one turned out great and I was inspired to paint another one from a different angle.

Ergo:

I didn’t spend as much time and effort on this one. I like the cartoony eyes, but the background bothers me a bit. Yellow doesn’t look so good with the purple on the left side of the head, I wish I’d painted the whole background in one color.

The likeness is close enough:

(Isn’t he really cute and handsome?)

The tilt towards the viewer isn’t quite the same and the corner of the mouth that’s away from the viewer is such a bitch to get right every time.

Both of the portraits are framed by now, but I could still paint the background if I’m careful..

So there’s not much going on on the painting front. I have some aspirations for learning to paint structures and buildings among landscapes, or just indoor views. The problem is that I feel like I need support and feedback and guidance to learn that, since I have barely painted anything of that sort. Perhaps I can participate in one of my previous painting teacher’s classes next autumn.

I’m so out of blogging shape. I think I will blog about my latest book purchases next. Or about knitting. My highbrow activities in general.

It’s about a year old, or maybe I painted it last spring term, can’t quite remember. Visually it seems to be ancient. I feel like I’ve come a long way since, as far as my skills. Then again, I wasn’t as invested in this one as I was in the Ensio paintings… strange that.

So this is a portrait of Dichen Lachman, an actress who made her breakthrough in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, a tv series that I absolutely loved. Too bad it got cancelled. I like science fiction so much, especially when it’s kind of semi-realistic.

Dichen is Australian with a Tibetan mother, so she has a beautiful Asian look.

I didn’t really do justice to her with this portrait, but I like how the hair looks quite natural. The face is much more yellow in reality. I’m kind of annoyed by how different my paintings, the colors in particular, look when I take a photo of them, in contrast with the real thing. I always have to tweak the photos, but there are only so many options in the MS Office picture editor…

Anyhow, I have a strong intention to start painting again before the end of the year. I’m still keen to learn some landscape painting, especially with an urban exploration theme, but I feel like I’d like to get feedback for that. I feel like a toddler learning to walk when painting anything else but faces. I’ll just have to see about it.

This is following the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics 15, which took place in summer 2008. Apparently this is the first volume, with 14 articles. I have no idea how many volumes there are altogether, but I think it’s nice to be picked among 14 articles covering historical changes in English syntax.

Besides, pink and red is a beautiful combination. Here’s the table of contents:

Mine is the article on prevent. My professor’s is the one on the TIME corpus. The editors wanted us to cross-reference to our articles, but neither of us saw any point to it…

It’s kind of funny now, considering that I’ll probably never take up my postgraduate studies again. Having an article published and some conference presentations under my belt might even be a hindrance in my CV when I apply to jobs elsewhere than in the academic world. So I’m not exactly underlining it, it’s just there. Something I did.

Well, there is a student in England who’s working on prevent and other verbs of prevention. She’s enthusiastic and has been asking me for help a lot, apparently thinking that I’m a lecturer at the University of Tampere. Whatever, it’s not like she’s my competition anymore.

As more time goes by, I feel more certain that it was never meant to be. I simply don’t feel at home in the field of research. There were too many external issues that I couldn’t stand at all, unrelated to the actual work. And I could never convince myself I was doing anything useful. It’s no help if others think it’s useful if I don’t believe in it myself.

I’m not supposed to be a thinker. I’m supposed to make things happen. I’m happy with my life like that, and I think that’s what counts the most. Why pursue something that doesn’t make you happy? I believe we only have one life, so it doesn’t make any sense at all to waste it when you know what makes you happy and what doesn’t. I’m lucky to have found what I enjoy doing.

Firstly, I’ve been knitting a Karius scarf (Ravelry link) for a long time in Novita’s Nalle Marjaretki Lakka and finally finished it some weeks ago:

Here you can see close up how the striping goes.. I am in love with this yarn and the colors. I love orange. And here it is, finished and being blocked:

I probably didn’t let it dry flat for long enough, because it’s curling again. I have to make another try at blocking because it’s a bit clumsy to use as a roll. It’s like a snake or something.

And then there is of course the hooded coat (Ravelry link), minus the hood, for Turpo the dog!

It’s obvious she likes wearing it. Look how comfortable and appreciative she is.

Yes, she’s certainly a fan of the coat! I removed the hood because it wouldn’t have worked with a leash coming from the back of the neck. It’s a cute idea, though. The color is actually hot pink, but my camera didn’t want to show that. The coat fits quite well, considering that Turpo is slightly on the heavy side for her breed. It’s loose around her belly, but very snug around her chest and front legs.

I definitely want to knit more dog coats now! I don’t care if they will ever be really used, I just like knitting something for a dog. And having her try them on! She’s such a sport and obviously loves the process just as much as I do.

And then there’s the basic garter rib cap that I wanted for the autumn – not too warm, but fends off the wind. (Ravelry link)

The pattern was very simple, but even so, I had some trouble understanding garter rib. And I made one tiny mistake of making one knitted stitch where there should have been a purl stitch … and the whole row got messed up. You can see it in the middle. I had gone so far after that that I decided it’s not worth unravelling, because the cap is black and nobody can see it in the winter darkness. I put this cap on when I don’t want eyes on me as I go to and back from the gym and krav maga, without make-up and sweaty…

And last but not least: my first socks! Ever! Yes, that’s right. I’m Finnish and I have never knitted socks before! Most girls learn to knit socks, mittens, scarves and stuff at school in Finland, but not me, since I rather took up wooden handicraft when given a choice. So I learned to really knit only last year, and not when I was a pre-teen like most Finns.

The instructions emphasized the importance of making the slipped stitches in the heel very tight, or you will get holes in your socks. Now I see just how important it would be. I complained about it to Amoena, and she said she has trouble making hole-free socks too, even though she’s much more experienced as a knitter. So I don’t feel so bad – I can sew them in.

I didn’t have a particular pattern for them. I started with the ribbed ankle part, then knitted the short row heel according to instructions in Ulla (link to website), then continued in stockinette stitch and ended by following instructions again from Ulla for how to make the toe part (link).

(Behold the holes)

I still like this colorway too. I already knitted a hooded scarf for mum with it and wanted to make socks too. I still have some yarn left and I will probably make mittens next.

But before that, I have new projects for Christmas: I want to knit helmet liners for both my brothers and my dad. My little bro will get the same color as my beef, my big brother will get  a black one, and my dad will get a blue helmet liner. My dad is like the least color-challenged of them, so I wanted to choose the least male-friendly color for him.

In addition, I want to try Amoena’s pattern for stripy arm warmers. I’m thinking I’ll make them in white and blue and give them to my cousin, who gets easily cold and likes blue (yes, such people exist apparently). Amoena and my cousin both have very slender arms, so I am not going to stretch them by trying them on my own arms…

There is also still the Travelling woman scarf that never took off from the very start. Back when I started it, I didn’t understand how to pick up stitches along the side and knit them. This is how “far” I got:

Now I do, however, know how to pick up and knit stitches along the side, thanks to the helmet liner! So I will take up that project again once my Christmas business is over and done with. And don’t you just love the colorway on this yarn?

And some final piece of knitting news: I did a yarnventory and re-arranged my yarn stash. That was a good idea, since I’d forgotten some of the yarn I had. Now I only wish I could put them on display somehow, for me to admire the lovely colors. Some kind of a yarn shelf with glass doors would be ideal.

One must have aspirations in life. And knitting.

I finished the painting two weeks ago, but I have been busy and didn’t feel like blogging. I will skip yet another painting class this week, but I will return at least once, if only to fetch my unfinished painting…

It is not that different from the earlier version. I added a glazing in bluish green and highlighted the white areas after that. The light coming from the left is perhaps more prominent now. I fiddled with some details in the eyes, lips and ears. Nothing drastic. The angle from the viewer’s point of view looks different though, simply because I held the camera in a different angle than last time.

And here is the model in the original photo:

I’m quite happy with the mouth and eyes. They look identical enough. The forehead is a tad too broad. The jaw and cheek lines aren’t quite the same, but it’s an endless task with brushes that aren’t accurate enough. The exact shape of the nose was impossible to tell from my monochrome, bad quality printout picture, hence it doesn’t have much form. The beard is bushier…

I still can’t paint exact replicas of people’s faces, but I think I’m getting better little by little. I was definitely quite fast with this one, mostly because I’d had a long break from painting. I’m happy that I had the boldness to paint it over at one point.

Even though it’s clear to me what should be ‘corrected’ about this painting, the process has come to an end. I can always feel it when I have lost my momentum with a painting and have reached a certain amount of satisfaction with the results. It’s not about getting perfect results, but learning something new and getting a particular image out of your system through painting.

I have noticed that I really, really like Prussian blue when I paint. I don’t particularly like it elsewhere in the world, but it really speaks to me in oil colors. I love the hues you get by blending it with white and yellow. And contrasting it with brown.

This time I focused on adding light with white, so the face overall is much lighter color now. I softened the eyes and mouth and added light to the hair and beard, too. The face definitely looks more 3d now.

It’s interesting to compare the last two versions side by side (see below). I changed the jawline a bit, and the added white makes the face look bigger and more protruding now. I’m happy with the eyes and eyebrows, finally. Since the paint had dried, I was able to fade out the eyebrows a bit, as they used to look too dark.

I also made the eyes slightly more downward sloping on the outer corners, as on the model. The look in the eyes seems more realistic too, like the person is looking the viewer straight in the eye. There’s still something about them that makes them look slightly different from the model’s, but it’s not too drastic. I also like the mouth more now: it’s a bit wider, as it should be. I sharpened both the eyes and the mouth with a hint of black.

Now I’m itching to glaze the whole thing, perhaps with green or blue, maybe even yellow. A glaze can subtly change the hues and make the lines and transitions between colors look softer and more natural. After the glaze, I would highlight the white parts again, as I have been taught. I think those two procedures might be the final touches. I’m very happy with the painting as it is already.

After taking the painting to the storage room, I started on another — a semi-profile of my beef, surprise surprise. Since it’s still in the sketching stage, I did not take a photo. But in my next blog post, you can finally compare the model photo with my finished painting, if all goes well.

It’s nice to blog like this, after each painting class! I have a hunch, though, that after these two paintings I will have a hiatus from efficient painting. So far I don’t have any ideas what I will paint next, but there’s still weeks until I’m done with the second one.

Before I went there, I had a look at the photo of the painting that I took and compared it to the original photo. It was easier now, after a week, to see what was right and what wasn’t. Moreover, looking at the painting in a smaller scale is often helpful, since during most of the painting process you look at it very closely. Sometimes you need to take a look from afar. I took notes about what needed to be corrected.

The overall facial shape was a little off and the eyes were too high, and consequently the forehead was a tad too small. The nose didn’t tilt in the right direction, the same for the mouth. So I had to paint over much of the face with the base color, white with a touch of citron yellow.

This can be very intimidating if you have managed to paint those details very well before. You may feel unsure whether you can recreate them as well as previously. But I decided it’s much more annoying to have the main features of a face off even if the details are right, than have the main features right and then get the details right again. I’m quite confident in my ability to get the same look again, as long as it is done at the right time during the drying process.

I was right to trust myself on this: I think the result is much softer with the second layer of color on the large areas of the skin. I changed the background color to black to have the face pop out more. Using the white-yellow, I altered the shape of the hairline and the jaws; moved the nose a bit lower and tilting to the right; moved the eyes and eyebrows quite a bit lower; added highlights according to the original photo; and evened out the skin overall so that the brush strokes wouldn’t be so visible.

After I’d made the basic changes, I just started again with the sharp details on the mouth, nose and eyes. I tried to add more texture to the hair and beard with lighter blue. I used a hint of black on the eyes.

So what remains to be done? I’m not quite satisfied with the eyebrows – their shape isn’t quite right, mostly because the model’s real eyebrows aren’t as dark as here. It’s tricky to paint hair because it has to be uneven. And I’m not willing to start painting individual hairs.

The beard isn’t quite the right shape either, but it’s difficult to tell because the original photo had burnt-out white parts on it. As usual, the nose doesn’t look quite realistic: in photos the nose is in the light and doesn’t have much sharp definition by shadows.

I will definitely paint the eyes more, sharpen the lines and brighten the color.

Other than that, I have a feeling that this painting is close to finish. Beyond a certain point, it’s no help to continue – quite the opposite, I often do more harm than good if I stick with the same painting for too long.