Oil Sketch: Donna

Today at Visual Arts Center, the model for the Portrait Studio group was Donna. I don't think I painted her before. She was evidently a Punta Gorda resident, or even an artist of some VAC group, because she seemed to know many of the portrait studio group members and told them up front, "Today I am here to be your model."

I usually never cared about who poses for us at VAC, but if the model was an "insider", I used to have a kind of unknown pressure for myself, not only for likeness, but also for something else. Don't take me wrong. All the insider models were very professional and would never make any comments on people's paintings. It was just my problem, I know. Therefore, during the break, when my friend Harris came to see my painting, I asked him what he thought of my painting. I told him that when I was drafting, I usually chiseled a face into simple large planes as a sculptor would do and it often looked older than the person because it was more angular than the real person. Harris smiled and responded, "What counts is whether you have a good time. So long as you enjoy doing it, that's good enough." Of course, he was to the point.

I also had another problem. I forgot to take along my paint box and the skin pink color in my guerrilla kit was totally dry. Fortunately, Donna wore an orange-peach blouse which made her face more yellowish. Finally I made do with the left over skin pink color plus some orange.

The whole painting went smoothly. Toward the end of the session, Donna came down to my painting and said to me, "You got me!" She asked my permission to take a picture of it. 

I was always the last one to leave the place -- never before the janitor showed up. My cleaning up took long. The janitor was always my faithful reviewer and commentator. Today, he immediately exclaimed, "I know this lady. You got her!" the moment he came in the hall and saw the picture. Then another lady, whom I didn't know, came to appreciate the painting on the parking lot when I leaned the picture on my car and was busy with loading my painting kit. By then I really felt good.

 

 

 

The photo above was what I found as an attachment in Donna's E-mail the next morning after the painting session. I remember she took a picture behind me when I was signing the portrait. I found it interesting so I added it to this blogpost.