Painting 123 - 8/31

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Oil on gessoboard

8"x10"

There are so many things about this that add up to me cringing in humiliation at the mere sight of it. The drawing is awful - the lips and the eyes are the only things that even sort of work, and even then the eyes' placement is wrong - and... I'll admit, I color-corrected the hell out of the scan (which I tried not to do for these posts) because the original was so awful.

It's better than the first one, but... not by a huge margin.

This is less the capstone of the project and more a testament to how done I was. After this painting, I didn't touch a brush to another surface for almost two weeks the first two days of which I spent watching the most mindless drek I could find streaming on the internet. Therein lies a lot of why it's taken me so long to finish posting these things: I didn't want to look at them, let alone put effort into showing them to others.

But I finished it. For four months, I didn't miss a single day (or night) of painting, come vacation and social visits and hurricanes and apathy and fatigue.

As ashamed of this painting as I am, I'm damn proud of that.

(i'll be doing a postmortem on the project in a day or two)

Painting 092 - 7/31

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Oil on gessoboard
8"x10"

Dear Jenna, GET THE DRAWING RIGHT BEFORE YOU PAINT. The shape of my face is correct here, but my right eye is sliding off of the side of my face and my nose is just wrong wrong wrong. And my lips are liver-colored, but that has more to do with me failing at color than failing at drawing. In general, I need to learn my lesson and stop attempting paintings in natural light until I have a better grasp on subtle lighting and the resulting palette.

I'm not convinced it's an improvement from last month's self portrait. I need to combine the two of them at the end of this month to be successful.

Painting 061 - 6/30

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Oil on gessoed board
8"x10"

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, I bring you the halfway point in my summer of painting challenge. I have painted myself again, a month after I did it the first time, and in spite of some things I'm not entirely pleased with (my nose, drawing issues with the line of my cheek, brow, and forehead, not enough chin, I look angry) wow is it a step up from last time.

When I began this project, it was with the acceptance that if I didn't improve by the end of the summer, I needed to walk away from oil painting and focus on ink, or pencil, or some other medium I was already good at for my illustrations. Since then, I have successfully completed 61 paintings in as many days, and whaddaya know? This is the improvement I was looking for. Now, in the remaining 62 days, I need to continue pushing, and prove to myself that this isn't a fluke, or a temporary upswing.

(also, yes, my hair has actually grown an inch, inch and a half in a month. it's sort of what it does.)

Painting 031 - 5/31

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Oil on gessoboard

8"x10"

I decided, when I started this project, that each month's end would be marked with a self-portrait. And here we are - at the end of the first month! I'm very, very happy with this painting, though as soon as I finished it I saw things to improve upon (the nose, the hairline, etc). I especially like the colors of the flesh.