The Figurative Art of Painting the Face



A work in progress

Firstly, it is the face that attracts anybody. As an artist, the thing I love to paint foremost is the face. It would be very easy so find the reason if one analyses it. But I would just like to say that emotions affect me. And the face is the part of the body where emotions show most easily. In that case, I would be an adherent of the Expressionist school of art, I understand.

Slowly I am getting to know my art. Why do many kinds of things? Why experiment with so many colors? Isn't it the right time to choose, to focus on some, and block out the rest. For a signature style, isn't it necessary to choose?

And layering - of colors - so that it shows in depth, is essential. For some time now, I had been concentrating on small size paintings. I had moved away from my size, which is large. In India, when I started off, I started with the large size. Due to the economy, I have forced myself to do the small sizes. But that has not been very satisfying. That should not be the case, but that's how I am feeling. My personality likes big paintings, and I should not confine myself to the small ones.

With this thought process, I am preparing the ground to restart work on the large ones. Hope this is the right path. What do you say?

The Process of Creation

Title: Fair Weather, oil on canvas, 50x40"

Giclee: $300
prints on paper: $150

Any process of creation seems to me to have a similar path from beginning to the end, when the outcome takes the final shape.

I have to still think it out if this is a generalization. What does one need to create? A thought. An idea. This is the germ, the seed. Whether it is in growing a tree, or creating a painting, or writing entire volumes of a novel, the seed is of the utmost importance. Rather, necessity.

First the thought, the idea. Followed by the real seed. Whatever the idea is, the seed would follow. The idea, the thought, is the most powerful, and the first step to producing results. Greats results, or otherwise. Whatever is the seed, other things would follow.

That is the basic premise in any field of study. Botany, agriculture, zoology, veterinary science, any field of study. This also pertains to intangible fields of study, or those fields which does not require the kind of scientific discipline that produces laboratory analysis and outcomes. Like the various artistic fields.

It is the germ that determines the steps that follow. After the selection of the germ, what other steps follow this initial step, I'd write about it subsequently. Now I need to go to bed and sleep.