Over the holidays, I was given a large pack of acrylic paints, and I've enjoyed using them. My knowledge on acrylic paint was based almost entirely on the three-dollar packs at Michaels Craft Store, but now that I've used some of the real stuff, I like working with it. I know it's not really comparable to the super high-end paints, but I'm still happy with my results so far.
I had painted a self-portrait before in art class a few years ago with monochrome oil paints, so painting portraits of my friends with acrylics was a different challenge but using the same concepts. My second attempt was a lot better than my first, and I only hope that trend continues as I paint the next two. Hopefully, I have time to make progress on them this weekend, but they take quite a while to finish. The process consists of printing their photos, drawing graphs on both the picture and the canvas, and then enlarging by hand and fixing somethings up so it comes across better in the final project. Then you go through and paint the hard parts like the eyes, nose, and lips. Once you've finished with that, you start filling out their skin and shading parts there is always lots of going back and touching up until it looks good but it's a delicate balance because there's a line to be crossed, and once you've crossed it is hard to come back.
I hope to attempt painting things other than portraits after I've finished all of them. My mom thinks I should start trying to make some money off of painting portraits on Etsy. The competition on there is a little intimidating though, so I'd like to get a lot better before I start taking on commissions.
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