At last week's painting class, my teacher taught us a pretty neat trick. He asked us to cut a little rectangular window in a small piece of paper that is exactly proportional to the canvas that you're working with. It would be hard for me to explain how to do that by just writing it. I'd have to show you so I wont bother going into the details on that. Anyhoo, after we cut the little window, we pick any picture/photograph of our choice and place the window on that. It could be anything really - magazine images, personal photographs anything. Then move the window around on that image until you find that you've captured something interesting inside that window. That's what you're going to paint. Chances are that it's not going to turn out looking exactly the same - but that's the point! Since the proportion of the window is the same as that of your canvas, it's easy to use a grid technique to draw the contents of the window onto your canvas. Then use only two colors (complimentary) and paint it. Of course, you're allowed to use shades of those colors by mixing in black and white. Anyway, I used the same technique of the 'window' and used an image from a graphic novel (Conan - Volume 1 for those interested - thanks to my husband for buying graphic novels with good art :-)). Result is what you see above. I didn't use the complimentary colors though. Anyway, I know I screwed up some stuff but overall I'm reasonably happy with the result. Cut me some slack - this is my first attempt at painting a face. ;-) I should also mention that I took this photo of the painting without flash - so it looks one shade darker than it actually is. It looked horrible with flash. Feedback welcome!
