Portrait Study

Well, it's another tough, jam-packed week at school so far...art school has such ups and downs to it. There are many classes which are going wonderfully, and I feel like I'm making great leaps and strides...but just as soon as that happens, I'll feel like I'm hitting a brick wall with another project and I just can't seem to get anywhere with it.

Anyway, on a lighter note, here's a little portrait study I did in Al Gury's portrait class last week.



I actually really let myself have fun with it, and for once, I felt like the whole process came along quite smoothly. I did the whole painting in the one three hour class session--the goal of the class right now is to do alot of quick little studies so that we begin to understand the most basic things about portraiture and the difficulties of capturing a likeness. Obviously it's not as well-finished as I personally like my paintings to be, but for what it is I think it was relatively succesful. I do think it's good sometimes to really vary your process and try to make yourself work differently than you normally do. For me, since I love to work painstakingly slowly, this means working much quicker and cranking out little studies and exercises. I'm hoping to try and do more of these in my other classes as time allows.