Scare-EEEEEE!

 

Oh, dear.  How did I get from Botticelli to this?!?  I'd better begin at the beginning to explain.

The on-line art course I enrolled in last year offered the structure of a master artist a week, followed by what was usually (to me, at least) an uninspiring video demo.  Early on, I decided to do my own thing with each week's artist.  When the week came around to Botticelli, I did a spin-off of his Venus based on Sara, the lovely young waitress (wait-person! server!) at the pub where I meet friends for coffee.

 

Like the fairy-tale princess, she is as good as she is beautiful -- but my Botticelli emulation was neither.  No matter.  Fate issued me another chance when later last fall, Sara rushed to show us her brand-new tattoo -- you get to see its full face sans the identity-protecting glasses I've installed on Sara's.

Well.  How could I resist?!  What's more, in my rambles through the internet, I'd come across a portrait demo made by an artist working in acrylic (as I do), and using sequentially seven colours in a linear format -- with surprising success.

Just maybe, if I'd stuck with that, I'd have had a different outcome.  But I decided to follow another artist's suggestion to begin with an underlayer of yellow ("the easiest to cover up in successive layers") and still another artist's suggestion to work atop a base layer of acrylic medium.  Here we go:--

I made one good decision at the outset:-- there was no way I was going to try for her lovely smile.  And the yellow underpainting wasn't a bad idea.  But the acrylic medium was  a Big Mistake.  Think plastic -- 'cause essentially that's what it is, and its slick  surface worked constantly against me.

Not far into the layout, I was out of control.  The Artist of the Seven Colours had started with violet lines, and mine were just too definite.  When I followed his further suggestion to make corrections in white (a common technique with acrylic -- in small patches), it all became horribly wrong.

 

Okay.  So I had to begin to make the rest of the painting as dense as the face and hope things would somehow even out.  As I worked on the tattoo, it became dense enough to resemble a carved wooden sculpture!

But I still wanted to see what I could salvage.

And at last, with apologies to Botticelli and Sara (who knows nothing about this)(nor does Botticelli), I called it a wrap.  Here's "At the Pub - Sara's Tattoo."

Then I went back to my collection of quotes from and about artists and found an encouraging nudge from author William Faulkner:--

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good."

So I'm making progress in a circuitous way, and I'll even offer advice to those couple of friends of mine who keep saying, "I can't even draw a straight line."

It's easy.  Really.  A simple four-step process:--  (1) Choose a snowy day. (2) Slip under the neighbour's fence and hit the ground running.  (3) If you must turn to avoid an obstacle, do so without guilt.  (4) Barrel on through!!