Lea

So here is probably my magnum opus in painting: a portrait of my gorgeous princess, Lea.

I don’t know how many days it took, but I haven’t felt such joy and energy painting something from complete scratch in years. No tricks, just straight up painting and repainting, over and over and over again.

I found out how INCREDIBLY HARD it is to get a likeness. Get one proportion wrong by just a bit or one angle skewed by 3 degrees and it’s over, it’s another being, another personality. Normally, when painting from random reference, I would have no desire to get such accuracy.
I’ll show you some steps, but do not let them deceive you, if it appears straight forward, hell no, it was not! I have painted, and repainted, and repainted, the same head over 20 times, searching for the likeness and probably almost 1:1 proportions. But it’s never easy. Now it’s too much to the left, now it’s too much to the right, now it looks like she’s not looking straight on, find out why it is appearing that way, now it’s too colorful, now it needs a bit of color, now it’s too warm, now it’s too cool, now it’s overdetailed and needs simplification, ah, the damned eyes, the window of the soul, the most beautiful, the most important part, so hard to get the exactly correct, I have painted them at least 30 times! This is the true process of painting, tricks aside. Tedious, frustrating, and long. But when you care about what you are doing, there is no such thing as time or frustration. And at the end of it all, you will come out with the kind of knowledge you could’ve never achieved otherwise. And that likeness I have been searching for usually has usually been three lines away, but we are genetically predisposed to be blind to these things and need to learn to see.

Anyway, I wanted to tell a little backstory for the ones interested in such things. It’s never easy, and it will never be, because puzzles that are easy are not rewarding, we want the challenge, and painting is and will always be Dark Souls (gamers will understand), a holistic experience.

I have painted so much more in the past couple of months, traditionally, digitally, wet media, dry media, multiple programs, brushes, styles, always exploring, so maybe I’ll share some more in the future.

Cheers!