painted face, attempt #1

I love Lynne Hoppe's painted faces. Pretty much everything about them grabs me - the grave expressions, the pale complexions, the spare details. I've never tried to paint any because A) my painting skills are questionable, and B) I didn't have the first idea how she went about creating them.

Well, be careful what you wish for because she went and posted a 'how-to,' bless her little heart.

Sort of an artistic gauntlet thrown in the sand, at least for me. I couldn't let those instructions just sit there, so I printed them out and got to work. I don't own all the various things she used, so I dug out what I supposed were reasonable substitutes, but some of this was total guesswork, since I really had no idea what 'yarka golden deep, titian's and claret' even is, for example. Is it paint? Some sort of cool crayon I never heard of? God knows and I didn't bother to google them, I just dove in. What a surprise, huh, for those of you who know me. 

Just to give myself the largest possible chance of even the smallest success, I tried to duplicate the same face as in the tutorial. No going off the reservation on this trial run. I'd been tearing pages from a gardening book and just started working on the page it was open to. I followed along step by step, trying to achieve the proper effects with the incorrect tools, and finally ended up with the face you see here. <sigh> Pretty grim. But it's just my first one. I plan to simply turn the page and try again. After while I'll have a whole book of sorry faces LOL.  


But even as funky as she is, she has enough of the general look of Lynne's faces to give me hope. And that's all I need to keep me at it - just a little hope.