Denizens Series -- It's a wrap!

I aimed to produce ten paintings in the "Denizens" series by year-end, and with mixed results, I'll announce that it's a wrap.  Did I learn a lot?  Yes.  Did I make progress?  Well…let's come back to that in a minute.

First, I'll introduce Number 9 in the series.  She's a lovely young woman who's a receptionist at the clinic I go to.  Almost every time I show up for a volunteer stint, her hair is a different colour, and I ooh and aah.  She told me her sister is a hair stylist, and she gets the benefit of her sister's experimentation.

Here's the first drawing I made from memory and my first quick painted study.

She was so excited about the drawing -- though we both agreed it doesn't really capture her beautiful young face.  (My words, not hers)  And I don't even plan to show her the final painting, Denizens Series - "The Stylist's Sister," copyright 2019.

Number Ten in the series is truly a denizen -- a neighbour down the block until two years ago.  Evidently, he worked from home and would go out for a daily coffee.  He seemed at first to be grim and vaguely hostile.  Then I began taking my sweet cat Nik for walks on his leash -- and that led to cordial sidewalk exchanges.  Here's my memory drawing and very slapdash painted study (gotta use up the excess paint on my palette).

The last time I saw him, Thanksgiving 2017, he and his 10-year-old son (who I'd never previously laid eyes on) were taking a big box of food to a homeless shelter -- quite a different person behind the forbidding features that had first caught my eye!  Two weeks later, I learned the family had moved out, unable to afford a hefty rent increase.  So here he is -- reminding me that you can't judge a book by its cover, Denizens Series - "Neighbour," copyright 2019.

Back to the opener:  Did I make progress through this exercise?  I'm not aiming to paint classical portraits but just want to become more….well, plausible, I guess.  Let's take a look.  Here's Number One, "Ringlets," compared to Number Nine, "The Stylist's Sister."

And here's Number Two, "Filmmaker", compared to Number Ten, "Neighbour."

Hmmmm.   Progress?  Not sure.  What I remember as a uniting feature of all four is that I knew something more needed to be done, but I wasn't sure what.  And I was afraid to go further and wreck the whole thing.

Did I say "feature"?  I'm sure I've read somewhere that it doesn't take an artist to instantly recognize the errors in the features of a painted face -- like those eyes in "Ringlets"?!  Looking for this reference on-line, I found an abundance of articles on facial recognition -- some of it rather scary.  The Smithsonian offers the simplest (and least sinister) summary of findings to date.

With the Denizens Series a wrap, what's next?  Well, there are always people off on the sidelines, and their figures and features are just waiting to show up in my studio.