Monday, January 5, 2009

Portrait of artist John E. Vander Stelt


(click to big)
Transparent watercolor 20x25.5 cm (8"x10")
This is a painting of  John (website, blog), who is an artist living and working in Iowa.  We have never met, but traded photos of each other via Karin Jurick's blog.  Everyone who asked to participate received an anonymous photo to paint in any way and interpretation we wanted. You can go there and see how everyone painted everyone else.

(boring...the following is for other painters to read, only!!)
The first watercolor portrait I ever attempted was of my daughter at about 10 years old.  (Actually, it was about the 3rd watercolor I had ever attempted.)  Anyway, it was enough to scare me away from portraits for a long time.  However, I didn't want to get left out of the fun over at Karin's, so I sent my photo in and received a photo of John to paint. 
 
Then I chickened out.  After about a week I forced myself to sit down and at least draw him. (Sorry to disappoint anyone who guessed the drawing was of a stoic Israeli!) 

Then I sat around for another week or so and painted 2 little paintings of him and finally a larger one, each time getting a little more confident.  Having just a couple of more days left until the deadline, I finally locked myself in my room and painted this one last night using one of my last sheets of my favorite wc paper, Arches 140 cp. (If anyone wants to volunteer to shlep over a roll of this paper for me in Israel when you come on a visit, I would be very grateful and indebted!)  Anyway, it turned out to be fun and I am glad I did it.

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