2021 The year of the faceツ
Paintings from 2021, the year I decided I was going to learn how to add a face to my art.
I have always been captivated by faces…
…I started out as a portrait photographer.
My first art career was running a Photography Studio in Toronto, Canada. I created publicity photos of all types of people in the entertainment industry. It was my job to capture their essence and the uniqueness of each person. Our faces tell our story. I started this business in the late 1990’s and so began my love affair with the human face.
Nearly 15 years later I fell in love with mixed media art . Drawing faces was something I played around with in high school art classes and not at all since. As far as I knew “I couldn’t draw a face” and for reasons unknown to me I never even tried.
Because of my love of faces, and especially the female face and the female form, I couldn’t help but include both in my art. I avoided drawing faces by making the view of the women be from behind, or from the front without a face. For a long time I was content with this and never really thought about learning how to draw a face.
I started trying to add faces to my art. They were not so good, but I was at a point in my art journey where I felt pulled to try and master the face.
I declared 2021 the year of the face!
⇐ This journal was dedicated to faces. I was going to get good at creating faces even if it took all year. I started out with simple outlines and often had closed eyes.
It has been a long and meaningful journey with more do-overs than I care to remember. Thankfully mixed media art makes it easy to cover things up and have another go. Here are a couple facial reconstructions!
I got fairly confident with drawing faces using a black Stabilo All pencil. I created a lot of faces and I sold many of these mixed media portraits. I can still see things I would like to improve on in each portrait and maybe I always will, I think this is part of being an artist.
The next step in this journey was to develop my skills in creating shadow, light, skin tones and the planes of the face.
I LOVE creating a face and having it slowly develop its character and its story. It is pure magic.
Since ‘my year of the face’, I now know of ways to get a massive head start on face creation. Getting the eye placement and spacing just right, getting the spacing between each facial feature just right, getting the face shape and all if its angles just right, can make a person want to give up before even getting started!
Using a photograph as a starting point
removes SO MUCH of the frustration. Using multiple photographs as references to customize and personalize a portrait allows for refined details in shading and expression. These techniques are perfectly acceptable in portrait creation. What you end up with on your canvas will likely barely resemble the original portrait photograph.
These techniques are a total game changer, they allow a portrait to get to a special and powerful place. I feel compelled to share these methods with other creatives who are avoiding faces or struggling to get all the parts of the face to fit together just right. If you have more do-overs on faces than you care to share, if you can spend an entire art session trying to get one eye just right, then the Personal Portraits Workshop is for you. The struggle is real and this is the remedy!
Find out more about the Personal Portraits Workshop and all it has to offer. You can add your name to the waiting list and receive a special price when registration opens on March 2nd!