paintings of people in progress

This is kind of an example of the "Disney cover art" style I'm trying to get away from.

I think it turned out as kind of a caricature of her rather than her exact likeness, but I've got plenty more chances to do portraits, so I'll stick a fork in this one and move on.

A more abstract painting I'm working on using my boyfriend as a model. The photo is pretty terrible, but I'm intending to give it pretty dark colors in the background, have ivy creeping out onto the walls, and make everything look like it's made out of the "wrong" material, if that makes sense--for example, I want the hands and arms to look very gnarly and similar to tree branches, the body to be made up of oily, magma-like bubbles, stone skin, etc.










This was our final project for painting class--my favorite to date. I'm still refining the cloth in the foreground and figuring out her hair, but I was pretty pleased with how everything turned out.

Before we went into two-hour sessions with the model, we had a fun quick-study class where we just did gestures. Painting from live models is awesome -- I'd love to take a class just focusing on that.