Painting this week really went great. I started out with another portrait, and struggled a bit. It turned out well enough that I’m satisfied, but I think I might revisit it in the future and improve on it. Looking at it now, some of the proportions are off as well as some features.

This week I took over my husbands old iPad and am using it to display my reference photos while I paint. In the past I printed photos, but it can be a bit of a hassle sometimes to get the printer to connect and actually print. I’m also using free images now from Pixabay. I’ve already painted most of my own best photos and I was losing inspiration to tackle some of the lesser photos. So using new, fresh references has been a great source of new motivation.

The first two photos this week are my own, but since I’m starting to practice painting people, the last three are from Pixabay. This second one was supposed to be another portrait, but I was in an area without internet and didn’t prepare ahead of time with references. I love how this parrot turned out though.

This black and white portrait is the first of my Pixabay references. I love the intensity of the look on the man’s face and painting in black and white was really fun. I paint in color so often that I forget how much I love the simplicity of it.

This portrait was really difficult to do. I was painting on black toned paper and the light tones of the skin kept turning a bit green when I painted them too thinly. When I painted them thicker, it started to look really pasty. I honestly struggled with this painting for most of the day before I finally threw some highlights on it and called it done. It isn’t the best likeness to my reference, but it stands well enough on its own.

This last painting was really fun to paint. After the struggle with the last painting on black paper I decided to do another black and white study to go easy on myself. Next week I’ll probably branch out and do some portraits of women alongside the men.