Portraits

After completing the commissioned landscape (cash-money-millionaire!), I decided that a) I don't like painting landscapes and b) I'm not good at painting landscapes, which explains my reasoning behind reason a.

So, I have decided to paint portraits of my family, all the same size 16"x20" and hang them together as a series. I have already done one of Ruby when she was a baby. I painted it a couple years ago. The image is super pixelated because I cropped it out of a picture I had taken of Ruby's bedroom and it was hanging on the wall and I'm too lazy to go take a picture of it that's more close up.

Here is a real picture of Ruby in a bear suit (thanks for letting us borrow it, Julie!) It's not the picture I painting from but you get the general idea.

So I have started on my painting of Go. This is the quirky photo that I'm painting from. I love it.
As usual, the inital drawing went really well. Then I laid in the basic colors. This stage of the painting is where my troubles always begin. I make wrong choices, I get aggressive and sloppy and I mess it all up, which lands me in a horrible mood until I can fix my mistakes. I go back with my rag and turpentine and rub everything out and start over. I have done this with every single one of my oil paintings. Sometimes this little cycle happens 5-6 times. With this portrait, I have only started over once so far and I doubt I'll be starting over again at this point. Maybe I'm getting better at this oil painting thing. But like I said, it puts me in a foul mood. This moring I have already raised my voice several times, thrown a paint brush acoss my art studio, muttered quasi-curses to myself under my breath and stomped all over the house while hollaring nonsense about quitting my attempts at art all together.
My husband, who after being married to me for almost 6 years, has learned how to deal with me during these tumultuous beginning stages of my paintings. He talks to me very slowly in a soothing voice and suggests I take a break by luring me into the kitchen with food. Today he made me poached eggs. He tells the girls to steer clear of their mother and then he makes himself scarce until I calm down while eating my food (yet another vicious cycle), then I go back in, fix my mistakes, decide to give this artist thing another whirl, paint until I've hit a suitable stopping point, come in and attempt to wash the oil paint and turpentine off my hands and all is right with the world...until the next time I go in to paint and jack it all up again. I totally can see why Van Gogh cut off his ear.