I had another satisfying 3,5-hour painting class today.

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.

So I just came back from my first painting class this term! The course started last week, but I completely forgot about it that time… don’t even ask.

Anyway. It’s an atelier course, i.e. we can just go in at any time between 10 am and 3 pm and use the facilities there. It’s a 3 minute walk for me as usual and 5 hours feels very luxurious. Today I stayed for 3,5 hours, which is quite optimal for one sitting. There is no teacher available, but that means the course is only 22€ (-50% off  for unemployed persons!), so it’s not a huge deal. Of course it would be great to get feedback from a professional, simply another set of eyes and another opinion.

But I have been painting on my own up to last year when I took up my first ever painting class, so I don’t desperately need support. I learned lots of things over the last year and now I know better what to pay attention to. I am more aware of my strengths and weaknesses.

I’ve had my painting topic in mind for a couple weeks now. I wanted to paint @UncleEnsio‘s portrait, so I took some photos one morning (might have been more than a hundred but let’s not go into too much detail) and I got a couple good shots for painting. And can I just say that he’s got a very inspirational mouth to paint, but difficult eyes and jaws and chin.

Here’s what I did so far:

This is after the first coat of paint: yellow with white to start building the base, and some prussian blue on hair and beard and eyes. First I started of course by sketching the face with charcoal to get a feel of the proportions and details. I had painted over the canvas cardboard beforehand months ago with some leftover paint, so it was very dry and ready to be painted on.

And below is after I started paying more attention to the eyes and mouth. I always debate with myself at first as to whether I should start with dark or light colors. Do I outline the features with a dark color in detail first, or give the face flesh and light with white, then go into detail? I usually start with dark, because I like to get the general look of a person right from the get-go, the eyes in particular. It’s inspiring if there’s some resemblance already that you can then keep fine-tuning.

Then again, there’s a technique called drybrush, especially with white, which means that you add a lot of light color to form a basis to build on. White underneath gives a really nice sense of 3d to a painting. But highlights are my weak point: I have a hard time looking at the painting simply in terms of light and shadow, without letting the details cloud my vision.

It is also difficult to paint evenly all those larger, smooth areas on a face: forehead, cheeks and chin. The brush strokes will eventually disappear when there are several coats of paint, but it still matters where and how much you apply white. Not to mention the nose: if the lighting of the original picture is very diffused, there may be hardly any shadows so the hues have to be used very carefully to give form to the nose.

May I present, ladies and gents, my Eternity Beanie! (You can also spot my Darth Vader foamy bath figurine on the left on the background if your eyes are discerning enough.)

It feels like I worked on this beanie for an eternity, hence the ingenious name The Eternity Beanie (TEB for short). In actual fact, however, I started it before Christmas, went on until about 90% and then stopped. I got hit hard by the Terror of Finishing a Work and Realizing the Yarn Will Run Out (or TFWRYWRO for short; a devastating, mind-affecting condition documented in various medical publications).

So in the end, I probably worked on it only for a month at best, since I finished it in like two hours. I was ecstatic when I realized I won’t even run out of yarn – there is still at least one meter left. I’m truly pleased with this beanie, as I’ve always wanted this kind of slouchy beanie. I couldn’t find a good one in stores, so I had to make one.

The pattern is called the Sockhead Hat by Bohoknits. It only requires 100g of sock yarn, so I thought my two skeins of 50g Teetee Pallas yarn would be perfect. I fell in love with this beautiful variegated yarn and I think it suits the beanie perfectly. The pattern was very easy for a beginner knitter such as myself, so I strongly encourage any other beginners out there to start with this pattern. I only dropped one stitch and my decreases didn’t go all wonky. Yay me.