Time Painted: April 2007
Here’s the finished version of the underpainting I posted last Sunday. The photo was taken right after it was all finished, but before I took it down from the easel.
That’s another classmate’s version of the painting in the background. Same subject, same lighting, different product. She used a red-brown underpainting instead of the blues I chose, and if you look closely, you can see the difference. Her painting looks like sunlight is shining on it while mine is in the shadows. And it will always do so, no matter the lighting, because it’s painted in.
I’m fairly happy with how the piece turned out. The face I never quite got right (it doesn’t look like the model), but it’s at an acceptable level. And the pants are a bit rough because I was running pressed for time at the end. It reminds me of some of the Mexican art I’ve seen (like you find here). The girl I painted certainly looks more Mexican than any other ethnicity.
Currently the piece is hanging out in one of our bathrooms. The walls are painted a rich orange-brown color, and the muted blue-tones of the painting make the piece pop more than if I’d painted it in the warm red-brown tones. It’s almost as if I painted the piece deliberately for the space it now resides, but well, that bathroom was a green color when I made the painting, and only switched to orange a year or two later…
