Basic Ass Portrait: Lessons about Painting From Playing Guitar (Patreon)

This is an Art Life Update about the recent art slump I slipped into. How I attempted to crawl out of the slump by painting a simple portrait. How that backfired. And How I eventually learned what the problem was through playing guitar. (please forgive the bad resolution of these images, these are screenshots from video I took of the process)

I'm going to make a video about an art crisis I had this week. That video will feature this painting. But, basically, I was working on a different painting. I didn't like where it was going and I felt like nothing I was trying was helping. I tried doing a bunch of the different techniques. Squishing, dripping, throwing paint around to try and get something interesting going on it. Decalcomania. All that stuff.

But it just simply wasn't working. And that gave me kind of a helpless feeling. Soon I was throwing paint out of anger rather than trying to get something interesting.

I walked away for a while and decided to just paint a portrait. No weird stuff. No cool techniques. Here's a face. Paint it. Classic. Easy.

The idea was to kind of remind myself that I could paint. To go back to basics. Build my confidence back up so I could go back to the other painting. I've painted a lot of portraits. I know what I'm doing. Didn't work out that way.

Here's how that went...

Drawing

Shadows

Highlights and mid tones

Why does her face look..like that. 

Instead of feeling like I know how to paint and getting back to work, I felt even more helpless.

One of my biggest fears in life is losing my creativity and the ability to make art. So the failure of this exercise felt like the knife being twisted in my side.

I felt defeated.

I took some of the darkest paint I had mixed and painted over this unintionally hideous face.

I wanted to do something to take my mind off it. I picked up my guitar.

What's my go to song on guitar? I couldn't remember. Had it been that long since I played? What about some Metallica? One? I learned that when I was 15 years old. Easy. I gotta be able to play One by Metallica.

Nope. I forgot it.

Jeez. I forgot how to paint. Now I can't even play One by Metallica anymore?

I looked up the tabs. It started to come back to me a little.

I got to this one part of the song that reminded me of a song by Sun Kil Moon that I've always wanted to play. I looked up that tab.

After learning the notes, I noticed that at one part of the song I was consistently getting stuck. This is a finger picking song. I never actually learned how to finger pick properly.

I looked up some videos about finger picking techniques and exercises and practiced them. Very slowly. Watching all my fingers. Making sure to hit every string with the correct finger. I gradually did it a little faster. Then a little faster. Then tried it with the song. I got over that part that gave me trouble. I also learned that finger picking feels really cool to do.

Anyways, I realized from the finger picking what was wrong about the portrait. I was rushing. I wasn't paying attention. I was just trying to get through it. That's what was wrong with the first painting too.

This realization inspired me to go back to a portrait painting video lesson that I watched a long time ago by the artist Sean Cheetham, a true master painter.

I watched the whole 3 hour thing all the way through. Okay I fell asleep in the middle and had to rewind it to where I was. then I watched the rest all the way through.

One thing he says over and over in the video is that if something doesn't look right, take the time to address it. It's like with the fingerpicking, you have to take your time.

Now let's try this again...

Drawing- with time and care taken to measure proportions and relationships of the face. It looks very sloppy but It made sense to me where everything was.

Shadows-It started getting a little sloppy so I decided to take a break

Transitioning to middle values and highlights. the underpainting looks insane at this point. The darker cooler color where the warmer lighter values will be. 

Highlights

Details. 

This is not an amazing portrait in my opinion. And I'm not an amazing finger picking guitar player. But the painting feels a little bit better and the finger picking is improving. 

And I feel excited to paint and finger pick.

have fun

goodnight sweeties

***I know some of you might not enjoy this type of painting. I know a lot of you want me to focus on weird techniques and stuff. But I'm actually going to do at least one more straight up portrait like this. And probably a few more.

Because this one feels like I was only just sort starting to get it. I was getting that feeling of "ohhh I should do it this way on the next one." 

And that's a feeling I believe in and trust. So I'm going to follow it.

If you don't like this type of art, please bear with me. I promise I'll get back to the weird stuff eventually. I  just need to do this for me.

Also if any of you have any photos of people in a portrait position that you want me to paint email them to scumchoir@gmail.com! 

Thank you for supporting my art!