I hope I can be ready for this. I spent some time trying to practice some ideas on my dog today, I don't think he was very interested. I'll speaking at this event about my Artist In Residence gig and process.

After another afternoon on this I'm struggling with the mouth, OMG teeth and a smile! Maybe I'm struggling with shapes still as this is not yet Michael. After going to Michael's painting demonstration last evening I was inspired to get back to this. Also the original mug shot of him that I posted here was in the local paper yesterday so I thought I better get back to it. I seem to be using all kinds of colour but here playing again with alternating warm and cool shapes. I think if I can get the smile correct I'm getting much closer to his likeness.

I started this portrait on Monday and got back to it yesterday - Thursday. Of the portraits I've been working on this one feels like it is presentable at an early stage, probably because the mouth is hidden. I can see a few things I want to adjust and that would be the eye on the right of the painting, it is not as squinty as the one on the left so needs to be closed a bit more. The edges along the hair had been quite fun to try and the subtle modelling a challenge. Here I was trying to use warm/cool tints to model these forms.
If I don't muck this up I probably can finish this in two more sessions.

I completed this several weeks ago so I would have something on display while I started my residency. This took me forever as I scraped off over and over again. But I learned a lot doing this and I just have to find the patience to let myself scrape and try again until I feel it is done. Doing portraits of friends requires capturing a strong likeness and I think I finally got there on this piece.
The 4 pieces I am working on now are at their various stages and I just keep going back to them after a few days working on others. This seems to give me fresh eyes to see with each day working with the next portrait, some days I get to work on more then one which is even better.

I have been moving along on the painting for my friend here. This was one of the first sketches in pencil to give myself the opportunity to study placement, values, shapes and edges before I went into paints. Doing the drawing in pencil first has been very helpful and it seems my first step in my portrait studies but hope that I can skip this stage in the near future. Although I've been really enjoying doing these drawings I think it will be good practice to keep doing more until I find them easier if that will ever come. Maybe when I have done hundreds.

It is the end of my second week doing my residency and I don't have a whole lot to show for it yet. I got 3 portraits started last week and I have been rotating through them again this week. This shows my setup I have this week. These artpods have storage for all my stuff and I can hang paintings up on them for display. By the time I clutter this up though there is no room for guests to try their hand at doing a self portrait which I eventually want to offer. I'll need another unit wheeled in for that to happen.
This is my second go at Win and I brought my monitor in to work from as I found my iPad is just too small. This is the second drawing stage after having scumbled in the underpainting. I proceeded into another painting stage after this drawing and correcting stage and will have Win sit for me next week to try and tweak the values and hues.
The other two portraits are now at the same stage and I'm going to start sketching out some new portraits from all the photos I now have another ten faces photographed and ready to go.

This was my setup and beginning stage of my friend Michael. I took the photo of him when he came to have a meeting the day before. I hadn't seen him wearing glasses before and I thought they looked good on him and will add them in after I capture the correct shapes and planes of his face.

There was a show being hung in the gallery today so lots of distractions and I was able to work steadily despite all of that curatorial energy swirling about.