I came across the work of photographer Jaime Ibarra the other day and was really taken with his style. I used one of his photos to get some portrait painting practice in. While studies are incredibly helpful, I don’t find myself ever trying to totally copy a likeness. Part of that is just the way I work and I think the way that I see things. When ever I’d try and copy something exactly as I saw it, I’d fail miserably.

I signed up for a figure painting class at the Berkeley City College and partially did this study to get ready. The class starts tomorrow and we’ll be painting from a model using watercolor, acrylic, and gouache. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a class so soon after finishing school, but it’s only one day a week and on a subject I really want to improve in. Also I figure I’ll check it out and if I don’t like it, I can drop it no problem. And man, community college is so much more affordable! About $100 per class instead of the $2,000 at the Academy of Art.

Did this in photoshop and worked on it for around two hours. I kept the whole piece very loose, trying to capture the general feel of the character. My emphasis was on the basic structure, rather than details. I also wanted to focus on the play of light over the figure. Light and how it plays across a composition is what I look for most when looking at paintings. It’s something I try and remind myself to practice in my own work. I’m happy with the direction I was headed in and am satisfied with the squint test (squinting the eyes so the image blurs out helps to look at a piece as a whole and not focus on the details). I’m not totally happy with the lightest values on the face. I feel I in effect used too much white (I didn’t actually use any white there, but a very light yellow-orange, but I think I just got too close to white and or used too much of that value/hue).

Regardless, it was great practice. I gotta keep doing more of these.