He asked,
“Are we to paint what’s on the face, what’s inside the face, or what’s behind it?”

This week, for the first time, I used paint to try to somewhat realistically portray life.

Class: Color Theory
Concept: Analogous Color Harmonies
Assignment: Starting from a black & white photograph, paint an image using only the tints, tones, and shades of three adjacent hues.

Somewhat in reaction to the subject and colors of my recent mosaic project, I chose this very expressive family portrait and a red-orange, orange, and yellow-orange color harmony.

Here is my warm-up with the colors, as well as the result of a short lesson in using shade to paint planes and volumes.

Now for the real thing: I traced the basic forms onto illustration board, and filled them with the basic values, omitting all detail. Then I started to use small variations in the colors to give volume to the clothing. Here is how it was coming along after a few hours.

So far so good, right? I liked being able to choose the colors of the outfits, since the original photo gave no hints except value.

I was scared and yet eager to start on the faces. The slow pace of this project allowed my imagination plenty of room to speculate about the family in this portrait. I definitely had the intention to paint the three things Picasso mentioned. But there’s more at play than good intentions.

Our left brains have come up symbols for everything, and it’s the right brain that sees only shapes and shades and can reproduce them accurately. Nowhere can this be seen more than in human depiction! This next part of the painting was war between my two hemispheres.

Plus, the subtleties multiplied. The slightest tweak of an eyebrow can change the whole expression, and the difference between a human and a mutant can lie in the shape of the nose alone! After lots and LOTS of tweaking, I’m proud to present to you a sufficiently human-looking family for my tastes. You’ll still notice areas where the left brain took control of the battlefield, but in the end, I’d say it lost the war.