Surreal Collage

The subject of this painting is a girl above the clouds. I made the sketch using a charcoal transfer. I took my reference, covered the back in charcoal, put it on my canvas, and traced it. To paint it in, I used acrylic paint and acrylic medium. This painting includes many of the elements of art. Line is used to show the shape of the face. Color is used to show value and texture in the background. Value and texture are used to show form in the clouds and sky. Contrast is used in several ways in this painting. There is contrast between the highly saturated background and the black and white face and this creates emphasis. I tried to improve the contrast in the face itself, but it's still a little too flat.

This painting follows the rule of thirds, informal balance, and has no horizon line. This painting shows a girl looking down from the sky. As I painted this, it evolved some, but because of time constraints, I didn't have much time to go back and change pieces that I didn't like. It started a two images. Next, it became a charcoal sketch on a canvas board. Next, I blocked in the blue gradient in the sky, the general position of the clouds and the different features of the face. From there, I built up contrast working on one part of the face at a time. To polish this, I used black and white paint pens to sharpen highlights and shadows. Now, I went on to the clouds where I repainted the gradient so that I could use the wet on wet tenquinequ and slowly worked my way down to the bottom of the canvas.

While I was working on this, I came up with a short story about why she is in the sky. She is looking down on the current state of America (literally and figuratively). This project relates to my life because I wanted to do another black and white portrait so I can better understand how to paint portraits without needing to worry about color. In addition, I was curious what the improvement between them would be. I was happy with the improvement although there are many things I wish I had done differently.

• The clouds at the bottom are messy.
• The top lip is completely black.
• I did this from 9 pm to 1 am
• The ear is flat.
• There isn't enough values between black and the light grey that I used in most of the face.
• The hair is too thick.
• The highlights are not bright enough.
• The eyes pupils look uneven and are different from each other.
• The face doesn't look like the reference.

I blended better, had more details, used less time, and did not need to repaint once on the second one.