LifeBook Week03: Portraits (attempts 3, 4 and 5)

This is my third, fourth and fifth attempt at cracking the "painterly" portrait style in this week's LifeBook lesson. Please bear with me, while I get this out of my system! My previous attempts can be found here and here.

Attempt No.3 started as a paint-over collage. I thought it would help me loosen up if I had some guidelines to follow. Nope, not really. It turned out ok but nowhere near the style I was going for. Halfway along I gave up and reverted to my comfort zone - without even realizing it! Her hair's got a golden shimmer to it. Well, if it's whimsy, let's do whimsy properly!

Attempt No. 4. has actually failed but I'll keep that a secret. I did something I hadn't done in years: I ripped up the page! Gasp! But then I immediately moved onto the next try and painted over a sketch I did last year of my son. It was originally a LifeBook2016 lesson (drawing in a grid) but I didn't include it in my book as it had no colour. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to paint over it, however, I failed to achieve that elusive "painterly" look once again and it looks more like an illustration. I'm still proud that I had the courage to paint over the original, though.

Straight onto attempt No. 5 - I don't give up easily, do I? I used a photo of myself as reference (as per the lesson), I didn't try to recreate my features (as per the lesson) and I only used acrylics and a Stabilo pencil (as per the lesson) - so far so good! I desperately tried to keep "loose" but looking at it now, I think I overdid the outlining with the black pencil and the blending of the skin tones. So yet again, I failed on the painterly front. Oh well! At least, I didn't try to make her look "pretty". 

My quest for achieving the painterly look continues, though I'm now seriously questioning my ability in this regard. Perhaps I'll never get it, but at least I'm trying and I've got five more pages in my LifeBook to show for it!