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| 'VACANCY' |
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| Well I
get an 'A' for perseverance on this one! Man! This girl gave me a HARD time! She was a moody thing! Some creative 'babies' are fussy right from the start, try to love it through the uglies and you'll hopefully be rewarded ... hey just like real kids~! |
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| 1. I began with a heavy heart, as evidenced by her posture and expression |
2. I experimented with shadowing and got big square boobs out of the deal |
3. Look at this face, she apparently doesn't think much of the neighbour girl's big boobs . . . who in turn doesn't seem to be too impressed with Miss Congeniality in the first painting! Anyway, here I worked on skin tone and gave her a reverse boob job. |
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| 4. And you could say I wiped that look off her face! Later that night I got fed up with the 'edginess' and I softened her attitude by changing her face. See? This is the part where I cheer up! |
5. Here I tried on a different hairdo and tried to get better lips happening ;P |
6. Lord Have Mercy!! I don't even know what to say here except maybe "Eeeesh!" |
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| 7. This is the same night, mind, and look what I did...I painted the background blue and painted right over her head *you're welcome* and suddenly it seemed a good idea to run with an exotic gypsy type. It got me out of figuring out a hairdo... |
8. ...but not for long. It was around 2 a.m. now, and my two eyes were looking out the same hole as my Dad used to say when we looked tired... anyway, I just couldn't feel it anymore so I thought I'd start fresh. Brave? Or nuts? |
9. But I couldn't get it out of my head that I really like the body, it was just the head that was giving me the gears, so with a couple rags in hot water, I washed off the black and unearthed her again. So I still had the face to come to terms with, but at least I salvalged the body. And I really liked the effect it had on her skin tone. This is one of those examples of happy accidents. |
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| 10. Well I was happy, anyway, but she looks choked! |
11. By this time, I was punchy and for nothing but levity, I painted in some teeth. I crack myself up. Well I HAD to get to bed, so she spent the night with teeth! |
12. Next morning, I suddenly saw that her face was too long! What a good night's sleep won't cure! |
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| 13. I got it to a happy medium. That was the turning point for me in this painting. Now I was getting excited. (There's a red filter on this picture...that's why it looks so cool) Ok, remember that blue? I took those rags and wiped off some black (this is an acrylic painting, by the way) Hot water takes care of getting to the underneath stuff. Anyway, I did this because I wanted to establish a light source, since I was lighting her from that side. |
14. Then I decided I liked the black again and the light source would just be assumed. Instead of the heaviness I felt when I started the painting, and instead of the frustrated identity crisis of her face, I was now feeling a 40's broad kind of vibe and loving it |
15. I tweaked her nose and her lips for quite a while. I don't think this exact nose or these particular lips made the final cut... |
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| 16. Just playing with light shading here, adding a lightened black in parts of the background |
17. You see the blue at the edge now? That's what I decided to do. Just hint at more, maybe a curtain, a door, another room? Some light source or another. But! It was short-lived. It's gotta feel right, ya know? Looks better here than it did on the canvas. |
18. Phew! In this final shot, you can see I played in photoshop to put the Vacancy sign above her. Also finally got a clear shot of her, and tweaked some light effects. Click on her :) |
| So you can see, they
don't come out of the box like this ;) There's a point in every painting where the Muse says "STOP!" And it's a good thing she does, otherwise I can see how easy it would be to fix something 'til it's 'broke' again. This particular painting gave me that feeling so I while I still see stuff I'd do differently, I rather love the original. It's large, 30"x40" and hangs in my bedroom :) |
| Back to State of the Art |
| Oh yeah! Hahahaha! I almost forgot! I did this in Photoshop 7 to crack up the boyfriend. It did! ;) |
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