• Jackie Little Miller Art Blog

Jackie Little Miller Art Blog

~ “My desire as an artist and as a fellow sojourner on this earth is to truly touch the lives of those around me with my life and my art.” ​Jackie Little Miller

Jackie Little Miller Art Blog

Tag Archives: head in the clouds

Outside The Box ~ Outside The Box

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jackie Little Miller in THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Acrylic paint, acrylic Portrait, art work, box store, color, colored pencil, comic book, Crower brothers, fun art, hardware, head in the clouds, polychromos pencil, WIP

So I have enjoyed doing the outside the box portion of this blog for years, right? Anyway I recently fell in love with a selfie my son and his boss had taken while at work at Crowder Brothers Ace Hardware in Lakeland Florida.Leigh and Charles

I knew immediately that This was going to be my next painting. I love doing portraiture with intense expression, especially if that expression causes people to smile. I knew that the title would be “Out Side the Box” right away too. My original thought was to put them looking into a box and having the box flaps framing them in. I tried this but couldn’t get the perspective of the box to look right and everyone thought it was a sack. LOL! So I canned that idea. I will have the final piece matted with a cardboard brown mat to get the same look.

SO I set forth to making my preliminary drawing and getting it on canvas.I tried painting it in acrylics, during a heat wave. Very bad idea as acrylics dry so fast. It was so frustrating because I just couldn’t blend the skin tones like I wanted. So I thought “well I will just finish it in oils. But I hadn’t worked with oils in a very long time and didn’t have the size brushes I needed to do the job right.

So again I went back to my original sketch and this time I drew it on all Media board and worked with colored pencil. I have only been working with colored pencil for about 6 months, but I absolutely love them. Being a art teacher down at the local art shop, I used this piece as a technique and style lesson. Double bonus points right?

Anyway I worked for days to get the faces just right, but was never satisfied with them. I liked the face of my son’s friend, but then I didn’t really know him. But Knowing my son so well I just wasn’t satisfied with his look. In frustration I decide to work on the background and vowed to myself that I wouldn’t touch the subjects again till the back ground was finished.

Do now I had to decide if I was going to do the ceiling of the store, or if since the title is outside the box, if I should place them outside and let the sky be their ceiling. I thought the second idea might be too tongue in cheek, but since I had planned to do a sort of comic book, realism cross kind of style, I figured I could get away with it. So on came the clouds. I have always been one to kind of avoid background because to me they are the hard part, but as I laid in the clouds, the faces became alive to me. I actually at one point teared up as I saw my son in the painting looking back at me. I am now a true believer in doing my backgrounds first. I hope you enjoy the final painting. And I hope you continue to think outside the box!

outside the box

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

Vivid Imaginations Studio

Vivid Imaginations Studio

Portfolio

smallmhs1
smallmhs2
smallmhs4
5mbRiley
last Goodbuy 5mb
Leap5mb
time to be bourn
Time to Mourn5mb
20201121_170335

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 795 other followers
August 2022
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Jul    

Categories

Archives

  • July 2022 (1)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (1)
  • February 2022 (1)
  • January 2021 (1)
  • December 2020 (1)
  • November 2020 (1)
  • February 2020 (1)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • October 2018 (1)
  • June 2018 (1)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • January 2018 (1)
  • May 2017 (1)
  • March 2017 (1)
  • February 2017 (1)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • August 2015 (1)

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Jackie Little Miller Art Blog
    • Join 795 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Jackie Little Miller Art Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: