Discovering Grisaille Underpainting

I'm taking the Painterly Portrait class by Julie Johnson on the Jeanne Oliver Creative Network. It's a self-paced online course which means I have access to the information whenever I want, but not the instructor (though it looks like questions are eventually answered). This suits me fine! Julie has offered a wealth of information and any/all basic questions have been answered in the comment forum.

As I mentioned in my Face Book post, I'm working toward getting through my fear of creating faces. Though I've been painting faces for a little while now, I've never truly learned some of the fundamentals. So, when Jeanne Oliver announced she was having a 50% off sale on her classes a few weeks ago, I leaped at the chance to take this class.  

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The Face Book

A Strathmore toned gray sketchbook is where I did the necessary work of confronting my fear of creating faces. I call it the Face Book.

I'd reached a point creatively where my fear was getting in my way. I was frustrated by my lack of knowledge and inability to create what and how I needed to. I was so frustrated, in fact, that I was intensely discouraged. 

Then came the Face Book.

I'd purchased the little Strathmore sketchbook some time ago during a sale at a local store. One day I picked it up and decided to create as many "ugly" faces as I needed to so I could become comfortable with the challenge of creating them. Creating things over and over again is basically what an artistic study is, so this would be mine. 

My practice was my curiosity in action. 

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Putting the Figurative in my Abstract

'm working on a large abstract piece for my Dad. The substrate is a square piece of birch plywood he was going to use for a project at his house, but then decided to ask me to paint something on it.

Abstracts are becoming a favorite way for me to paint. Merging that with my fascination with drawing and painting faces, and figurative abstract becomes a natural avenue for me to explore. I just wasn't too sure about a consistent way to create to silhouette-like shapes I so admired in other artists' work. 

On Pinterest I came across this video from artist, Robert Burridge who has an extensive video library of tutorials on YouTube he calls, BobBlast(s). 

This video was just the thing to help me step forward into creating simple, but expressive figures.

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