4/16 Blog #3: Change of Plans

Hi everyone! Welcome back to my blog. I'm excited to discuss with you guys the hardships of this week and my painting process. This week was a pretty busy one for me, and it caused me to have to adjust my scheduling and change my plans for this week. After initially planning on painting two albums, I decided to only paint one. This decision was caused by my poor time management and my underestimating of the difficulty of this album cover. Without further ado, let's dive in.

Time for what you all came for (or at least what I would come for): Mr. Bob Ross. I wasn't able to apply the main lessons from this episode to my painting this week, but I still feel the need to brighten your day with his brilliance. I watched Season 20 Episode 2 of "The Joy of Painting" and I was blown away. 

You see the cabin, right? That was all improvised. He painted the background and the trees and was just like, you know what? I think a cabin would look good...right here. He just painted it on the canvas, like what. That just doesn't feel like legal. Maybe I just need to be more open-minded and creative. Anyways, yeah the main lesson I learned from this episode was that paintings tell a story. You paint whatever story you want to tell, and this story develops as you paint. It's pretty much all instinctual.

So, after receiving my weekly dose of serotonin, I was ready to begin painting my second album cover: "H.E.R.", by H.E.R. The debut self-titled album is pretty awesome. Great R&B vocals and music. Now, this album has 20+ songs on it, and I can say that most of them are great. My personal favorites are "Focus", "Best Part", and probably "Jungle". If you're into R&B, this album is a must-listen, and I'd recommend it to all. Now, here is the album cover I will be painting:

Seems fairly simple, right? Yeah, no. I really underestimated the difficulty of this album. Blending is such a pain and I have never painted any main object/figure like this silhouette. Instead of finishing in a couple days, this took me about 3-4 days. Not ideal. Let's dive into what occurred in these few days.

Blending

I chose to start with the background (which may have been a questionable decision, but whatever). I was not going to make the same mistake I did last week and not make enough of the colors needed. I used so much paint, but I wasn't going to risk running out. That would suck pretty badly. So, once I got my colors down and the right amount of each (blue and orange), I put it on the canvas. Almost right away I realized my blending wouldn't look like the blending on the album. With my knowledge of color mixing, I knew that my blue and orange would create a grayish, brownish, greenish type color, not that perfect blend with only blue and orange seen above. I still watched YouTubers demonstrate how to blend and some important techniques and do's/don'ts. I'll place the links at the end of this blog. Now, here is my version of the background (which I think still looks not bad):

Subject

Once I got the background down, I realized that I needed to draw a whole silhouette of a woman. I realized I should have probably outlined this before I did anything, but I didn't think about that which put me in quite a dilemma. I could either choose not to outline or I could outline and risk pencil marks on the painting. I decided to outline because I figured it would be easier to get rid of graphite pencil marks than black paint. I'm 99.9999% sure I chose right. I was surprised at how good my original outline was. I had to make a few small adjustments and had some mistakes that were difficult to fix, but it turned out well in the end. Once I had my outline, I just had to fill and do the hair (probably the hardest part). I found it very hard to replicate the convincing, flowy curls shown in the album. Now, it's time to look at the finished product. Hopefully, you guys like it.

Honestly, I'm happy with this piece. I know there are many mistakes and it may not look identical to the album, I think I captured the main features well. Sure, there are some mistakes with the silhouette and the letters probably should've been larger, but I'm still happy with the result. Despite having some happy accidents, I truly enjoyed myself during this piece. Even though plans changed and mistakes were made, I was happy when I was painting (and while watching Bob Ross).

I'm going to try to improve on my time management and being a faster and more efficient painter. Not trying to take this long again, you know. I just need to continue to keep practicing and learning.

I highly recommend that you listen to "H.E.R.". It's a delightful album with great vocals and lyrics that evoke many different emotions. Also, I'm open to album recommendations to paint and/or to just listen to. If you have an album that you would like to see painted, comment below, and I will do my best to get it done later in this project.

Well, that's all I got for today. I'm going to start painting more difficult albums, so stay tuned, and I'll see you all next blog post. I'll catch ya later!

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIyqMTKFmC0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mVdCpWOaOM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZONVHAftzFg

[commented on Juliet, Devon, and Anoosha]