Public Face, Mixed Media, What to Paint and How to Develop It

Public Face

As you, my friends know, I have been on a journey for a while to try to connect with my inner creativity.   That has bubbled up an old desire that I would like to write.   But about what and how?  

"How-to" books and videos on painting/drawing abound.  But I've always wondered where picture concepts and ideas come from?   Looking at Hubpages there are a lot of articles on art, but not necessarily the thought process of developing a specific story and painting process painting by painting.  Thinking one person's thoughts might be a niche and of interest to other beginners and intermediates.  There is an exercise that many writers do, they take a picture and write a story or character profile around it.   So that is what I did for this painting and this is a first draft for a potential Hubpage article to test the waters for interest level.

THE STORY:   First question I had was why the mirror covered the eyes, easily the most expressive part of our face.    It intrigued me.  What is this telling me?   What does this make me think?  

Initial thoughts were she was hiding who she is, just showing us her public personna.  That led me to what we see isn't always who a person really is. We all have public faces that we use to impress upon a first meeting or distance ourselves from others.  It can take a long while to really know some people.   Even though they may be and act social, what they say might not really tell us much.  That can be good, bad or just a way to protect oneself.  

CHALLENGE OF THIS PAINTING:  

I wanted to experiment with creating a seamless transition between the collage and painting segments of this picture.   Can you tell where one stops and one begins?   This using mixed media also supports the painting's story of what is real or not.

WHAT YOU NEED:

1)  An intriguing photo reference.  Found a copyright free image by Amir Geshani/Unsplash.  This photo stopped me in my photo perusal, it's an arresting image that could  have multiple story lines 

2)  Acrylic mat medium, ModPoge, glue stick as the collage glue 

3)  An old Landsend catalog provided skin tones for the forehead, hair, hat and shirt areas.    

4) Various acrylic paint colors to create skin tones and background areas.  Use what colors  you have and are comfortable with.  (Red ochre, Burnt Sienna, Unbleached white, Titanium white, Black, Unltramarine blue, Chronium Oxide Green, Napthol Crimson were some of my colors, only because that is what was on my palette.)  

5)  Miscellaneous color pencils and ink pens, and graphite pencil were used to neaten up edges and define areas between fingers.

THE PROCESS:  

COLLAGE:   

1)  Went with  the collage first as it covered a large area of the painting's area and takes away the white space.  It also clearly defines the areas that need to be painted.  Started collaging with the top of the head in the hat area.    I did get a little fussy by applying bright red small strips over a darker red area.   You don't need to do that, just a red area is sufficient and you can  draw or paint into it later with pen, paint or color pencil to create the fold lines and highlights.  

2)  The tricky part was to find the top of the face and integrate it into the mirror which will be painted.  Luckily my Landsend catalog had a model whose forehead/hair area was an "almost" fit.   I placed that portion in the center or proper place, lining up the nose, and simply enlarged a bit the hair and shadow areas on the sides of the  forehead to make up the space difference. 

3)  I used a two page spread to get enough of the blurred printed background to use for the shirt.  Luckily it was gradiated which gave me parts to use for the bottom more shadowed areas, and lighter areas around the front and neck where more light might be more apparent.  

PAINTING:

After letting the collage thoroughly dry I started to apply paint.

1)    Because the eyes are the focal point I wanted to have more flexibility in building them up.  So I decided to paint the face, neck and hands/arms.   This photo had natural boundary lines for painting and collage already built into it.

2)  Since you want the mirror to look like it is sticking out, there is a bit of distortion where the bottom of the mirror and lower part of the face come together.   Also you will note that area is really in shadow.

3)  Nest is the transition from the arms/neck area into the collaged shirt area

4)  Paint the fingers and arms and transition them into the sleeves. 

5)  At that point I needed to neaten up and paint the background area.  Also needed to look for those little parts of background that peeked through around the neck and fingers.  Wanted to be sure to catch those as that grounded the figure to the background.

Please give me your honest feedback about length, too detailed, not enough detail, no interest, etc.  Know I have a lot to learn yet about writing but want to find something that would be appealing, especially to intermediate level artists as most things are geared to beginners.  I want to help them grow, as well as myself growing to the next level.