After painting Marie Antoinette, I was eager to try another 5x5 watercolor using a reference photo. I opened a picture of David Bowie in Photoshop and increased the saturation, the better to reduce glare and really look inside the shadows. Then I printed out the photo and traced the shapes of some of the shadows on the paper, primarily to stop my eyes from going OMG DAVID BOWIE and make them break down the face into shapes, colors, negative spaces, relationships.
After that, however, I still had to make the jump. One can do whatever one likes on a printed photograph; it's another thing altogether to take a brush to a blank white square. I don't sketch when I do watercolors; I just go. I took lots of deep breaths, put clean water in my jar, and jumped in.
Here's a look back at the whole challenge:
I do love to see all the things put together! Hella impressive. I mean really. This Bowie is just perfect for the end. The Marie also would have been but this one is so damn striking! And the teeth!
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