Stardust Mixed Media Woman Portrait

Stardust

Well, finally some art room time and boy, was I ever ready.  With all the commotion this week we were out a lot more than usual.  I actually missed my peace and solitude, so it was a relief yesterday to be able to concentrate on completing this painting.  I don't know about you, but when I paint I go somewhere else.  I always end up refreshed, even when I am fighting a painting, it is just magical.  I was able to finish another mixed media portrait in my woman's series, again a combination of acrylic and pastel.  Since I was using the blue tones I decided to put her in a starry sky.    I really love the galaxy look, and yes Sheila, this is a lot like my Selkie picture and I thought of you while I was doing it.

Anyway I do fight with losing the likeness as I paint through the picture.  When I realized I was starting to lose the likeness I went to my trusty proportional dividers (thanks again to Stefan Baumann whose video on how to use and why, make me find them and use them) and did a little measuring putting center lines on both reference and the painting.  These things are really terrific, so why don't I use them more often?   They do help you train your eyes for correct proportions, and eventually you can out grow using them  But in this case they actually saved the day as it was really tough to find the facial edge in the reference photo.

You can also use these to either enlarge or shrink a painting size and can be used using photos or plein aire to help improve accuracy.  Thanks Helen, I also used lines to but, had to do a quickie tweak as seeing here that I felt I had missed the angle on the mouth.   Still a little off, but think I will let it roll.

Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look.