30 Faces
As I was preparing to travel to the Scottsdale Artist's School in the fall of 2022 to take a week long watercolor portrait workshop with the uber talented Ted Nuttall, I decided that I'd better learn something about painting portraits before I went so that I didn't embarrass myself, having only painted a handful of portraits ever in my life. Before I left, I was searching online for some reference photos that were royalty free. I stumbled upon an app called Museum by Sktchy which then took me to the Sktchy School website. Lo and behold, they had an online class called 30 Faces 30 Days. The class had already started and I was leaving for Arizona in a week but I signed up anyway and started painting. I painted along with 4 artists and completed 4 portraits. They supplied the reference photos and I painted along at my leisure, usually at night with a cup of tea. Once those 4 were completed, at least I felt that I had a little "fresh" information about how to paint a portrait and had a few more paintings under my belt. I flew to Scottsdale and had a fabulous time in Ted's workshop and met some really wonderful, talented, accomplished artists. Some of them follow Ted around like groupies and take all of his workshops. I would do the same if I lived closer. He is a fabulous teacher and human being. When I returned to Montana, I completed the other 26 portraits. It took me more like 90 days to complete them but who's counting?
Most of the portraits on this site are from paintings I did online with Sktchy. However, with all of the practice of painting 30 portraits, you know the saying? Practice makes perfect! Well, I'm not perfect but I can definitely say that practice has helped me to understand how to paint a portrait and to have fun while doing it! I even completed a portrait of Ted recently with gouache on black watercolor paper. Who doesn't love a challenge? After all, a human face is the hardest thing to draw and paint. If you get the eye too low or the shadows too dark, the person will look like a circus clown. If you are painting a tree and get a limb in the wrong place, who is going to know? It's still going to look like a tree. Now I'm asking myself, "Why didn't you just stick to trees?"
