Thursday, December 29, 2011

Oil Portrait Painting

I've been working on a portrait of the parents of the children I posted last time:

Once again the colors didn't translate too well. 

An interesting article recently in the Atlanta paper, taken from the NY Times, on using fake heads and/or bodies in print ads.  A scientific term "uncanny valley" theory applies to this with regard to using unreal faces:  "People will tolerate only so much artificial human likeness before attraction turns into revulsion.  If they added a super realistic but not-real face, they'd become uncanny, and therefore frightening, eerie and creepy."   I wonder if this applies to how people view art.  Are hyper-realistic faces viewed as eerie?  What about other alterations and abstractions?

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Watercolor Portraits of Children

I've been working on some children's portraits, and feel very fortunate to have a chance to paint these delightful children!  I think watercolor is the perfect medium for children's portraits, but I'm also working on an oil version for this family, on one canvas.  The colors are not quite accurate in this photo of the three paintings: