Flowers For Momma

Added 1/19/2018 - Here is the finished painting.

With the proverb, "nothing ventured, nothing gained," in mind, I decided to start on a painting based on a photo of Joey that I took around 1982 of him holding a bouquet of roses to give to me.  Joey was always giving me flowers, and so that's a special memory for me.  I actually wrote a post about this earlier today - and that post inspired me to go ahead and give it a try.

Here’s the photo.  Precious little boy!

Then I sketched out the basic shapes with vine charcoal. I’ve never seriously tried to do a known face before. Here's the outline I sketched directly onto the panel.  You can see that it is only the outline - no shading or other details yet.



I then started painting.  I did basic skin color, hair color and began on the shirt.  The photo is black and white.  So I'm guessing on the colors of his shirt and the flowers.



I added in the main flower colors and began on the leaves.



I put in a background.  I didn't want to do the house and trees that are in the photo.  I will add more to the background to give it a more blurry and nonspecific look.  Added some shading in the flowers and leaves.  Added some shading to his face as well.



Then I added some yellow to the background.  I'm not a fan of how that looks.  However, I am going to leave it for now.  I kept telling myself to go ahead and try things.  I can always start over with a new panel if I totally screw it up.  :-)



So this is how it is now.  I will leave it for awhile - let the paint dry a bit.  You'll notice on this last photo that I added some shading to his arm - as well as working on his ear a little more.  Overall, I am pleased with it.  I am quite sure I will work on it more tonight and probably tomorrow until I get it to look the way I want it to.  I plan to work on the background a lot - will probably get rid of the delineation between the blue and the brown and make it just a completely out of focus background.   And of course I will do a good bit more work on the flowers and foliage.

I'm working on the poem to go with this painting.  Here's what I have so far:

Flowers for Momma

You were a little boy picking flowers

A gift for me, your momma.

Multi-colored roses from our garden

Or dandelions clutched in your fist

Maybe wild daisies – a favorite

You’d hold them up to me and smile

“These are for you,” you’d say.

So much love wrapped up in blooms

Tender memories for this mother’s heart. 

(Later).  I went back upstairs to my studio and worked on it a bit more.  Here are a couple of progression photos:

First, I blended the background - making the brown flow into the blue and muting it all

Then I put more detail in the flowers and leaves.  I put highlights on his shirt to show some folds - although looking at the photo, that doesn't really show up.  I will make the highlights more distinct tomorrow.  I worked more on his nose and cheek and ear - trying to get them more natural looking.  I will let it dry overnight, and tomorrow I will do some more fine-tuning.  I think I will probably finish it tomorrow morning.  The biggest issue I see now is his hand.  His arm and hand run off the bottom of the panel.  I need to figure out how to make it look like that rather than looking like he has stumpy and misshapen fingers and thumb.  LOL!


For tonight, though, I'm done.

Today was a snow day for school children, and tomorrow is, too.  Since it is only 5 degrees outside and not supposed to get above freezing tomorrow - and the roads are icy, and the ground covered with snow, school will likely be out on Thursday as well.  Now that I'm retired, that doesn't really affect me anymore.  However, it feels like I have permission to do only what I want to do on snow days.  Guess the teacher in me is still alive and kicking and looking forward to snow days.

Update: Wednesday, 1/17/2018
I worked on this more today and find myself at the end of my ability for now.  I'm going to take it to the art class I'm taking on Friday.  The teacher, Rachael McCampbell, has agreed to look at it and offer suggestions.

Here's where it is for now:

(Thursday, 1/18/2018).   What does one do when the arm and hand just don’t look right? Take them out entirely and make the out-of-focus background surround the figure.  I think the face is very close to what Joey looked like at that age. I'm not entirely happy with the background.  I used a palette knife to do some scraping to "fracture" some of the lines.  However, it doesn't look like I want it to look.  So I will go back to the studio in awhile and work on the background a little more.  Oh yes, I added another rose to it.  When I looked at the original photograph more closely, there was a smaller rosebud in the middle.  So I added another yellow rose there.  I like the blurry background completely surrounding the figure; it helps the face and flowers stand out more.  I'm actually in a little bit of awe that I could do a face that well.   

I decided to work on the background a little and put some “suggestions” of other flowers near the others - and the suggestion of a structure behind him.  I also added a little shading around his head to make it stand out a little more.