SI #1

For my first project I decided to go a more literal way when answering my question. I painted a girl with bad, messy, chopped up, imperfect bangs. I also made her tilt a little to the right so that her placement wasn't perfect. I was inspired to do a portrait of a girl with bangs because one of my friends Ani always trims her own bangs. Getting bangs in the first place can be risky, but cutting them yourself has always sounded scary to me. Ani does a good job and looks great, but not the portrait. When I made the portrait I wanted the badly cut bangs to be the imperfection. I don't know if the choppiness of the hair is obvious enough though.

When deciding what material to use I wanted to choose something new. I chose paint sticks which are like jumbo crayons of paint. At first, I tried them and couldn't get any pigment on the paper. It felt hard and rough and I asked if maybe you had to wet them first or something. I didn't know that in order for them to work you have to scrape off the top layer of hardened paint and once I figured this out I loved using the paint sticks. They require some messiness and I liked using my hands to blend and mix the colors.

After sketching out and deciding my materials for the portrait I had to choose color. At first I was going to use realistic colors, but decided to experiment with red and blues instead. Since I'd never used paint sticks before I experimented a lot with the blending and mixing of different colors. I also had to practice my shadows and highlight shading since I made the portrait sort of realistic. I redid her hair and eyes a couple times by painting over what I had done and using thinner materials like pastels to get little details. The hair was one of the trickier parts to do because I've always found it hard to give hair texture and shade. I used black and blended it with different purples and browns to do the shadows. I used a white paint stick and pink pastels for the highlights. My next steps for the painting would be maybe putting something in the background or perfecting lines and highlights.