I started the second painting of the three commissions I received a week ago. It's still in the very rough stages...and I mean VERY rough. There are a few challenges that I can already foresee with this painting. One, the man has salt and pepper colored hair. I know this will be difficult not only because I have never painted this color hair, but also because it's hard to show the variations in the hair color without painting each strand of hair. I figure if I paint the hair in blocks of color and then add individual highlights, it may look right in the end. We'll see...
Two, the man has a lot of wrinkles, which isn't normally a problem and probably won't be later, but at the moment he is looking super cartoony. I realize this is just the underpainting and I can turn this around and make it look good with just a few strokes of the brush and some blending, but it looks pretty bad right now.
Three, the man is also wearing a mesh shirt. As far as patterns go, this is pretty difficult. There are THOUSANDS of "dots" on his shirt and I am not going to be able to paint them all. I'm trying to figure out how I can give the impression of mesh without actually having to paint every dot. I'm not sure how I will do that just yet. I may just make his shirt into a solid colored shirt and forget the mesh altogether. I don't know how the clients will feel about this though. I'm hoping that if I go this route, she'll be so impressed with the faces of the couple (it is a picture of her parents), that she won't notice the lack of mesh.
I like that this picture is presenting challenges for me and keeping me on my toes. I think it will be one of my more challenging pieces but I welcome these kinds of challenges.
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| This is where I left this painting after 3 hours of painting... |
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