My second charcoal drawing so completely buried the first, that I took the first one back out of my portfolio, haha. Oh well, now that I’m less rusty and have all the tools I need to do charcoal cleanly, I’m sure I’ll do lots of good drawings for my portfolio.
There is one hang up, however. A local woman saw one of my warm up pencil drawings and commissioned me to draw her portrait. While this is good, and I’m happy about being paid for a drawing (a first for me, despite having drawn for the last 17 years) there are all these artistic experiments rattling around in my head that I want to try. Most of which should be portfolio worthy. A simple pencil drawing seems kind of boring. 3 months ago
I’ve always drawn, but not productively or consistently, not since college anyway, but when I think of a job in which I draw a lot… well, let’s say it appeals to me. To that end, and others, it seems like I should create a portfolio.
To start, I got a brown paper sketchbook, chalk and charcoal. It’s always been easier for me to draw with these than pencil to make a striking image, and since it’s so forgiving, it seems the best place to begin while I knock the rust off.
I found a model I liked online and distorted her image in photoshop and drew that tonight. The result wasn’t miraculous, but it was certainly a good start, and every bit as dramatic as desired. I’ll try to draw something like it at least once a week. 3 months ago
here is my favorite painting in my portfolio: 13 months ago
... is because I don’t like one of the large paintings we photographed. It’s a portrait of an acquaintance I intensely admired at the time of the modeling and nearly despised by the time I finished the painting. It was an experiment to see if I could combine representative portrait painting with decorative art nouveau techniques, but by the end it became a strange allegory of young adulthood. The end result: it looks like my model, but it is strange and not quite what I wanted.
Maybe I just need to bite the bullet, accept the work, and move on. 14 months ago
... this is a nudge to put the rest up for an online portfolio 16 months ago
Omar sent me a zip file of the jpgs. Now I just need to crop some and load them up to make an online portfolio. It’s a good start! 17 months ago
Future commissions may help me support my painting habit. Ahem. My friend, Omar, nudged me about not having a portfolio months ago when we were first getting to know each other. Since I have time free now that I’m between semesters, I invited him over. He’s a filmmaker, and familiar with editing images (for this project, the most relevant part is removing glare from the oil paintings). e came over and we set up our “photo studio”: we moved the dining room table into the living room and draped white sheets for a background. He’s going to crop the images, but now all of my professional level paintings and drawings have been photographed.
I made him REALLY good coffee in thanks. 17 months ago
