First Post

Hi, I'm Taylor and this is my first post for Visual Studies 185X. I just finished my first piece for this class, and I based it off of our first song, "You Are My Sunshine." I decided to paint a portrait of my best friend Eliza, because she is pretty much my "sunshine." We share a room, so we see each other every day, and her face is more familiar to me than my own. I've been using her as a subject for my artwork since high school, so she is used to posing for drawings and seeing my creative interpretations of her.

That is the finished product. I think it looks moderately like her, not that it really matters, as I don't tend to strive for realism. It looks kind of cartoon-y, which I like. I used acrylic paints on a 24"x24" canvas. I was really unhappy with the painting when I started; I first sketched Eliza's face from life, and once I put down some color, the skin tone was all wrong and I had to rework it by painting over the whole face. This is the point where I started to feel good about the piece:

I really like the hands in this "in-progress" shot. 

Also, the background is meant to be a not-so-subtle display of sunshine-y colors, with yellow emanating from behind Eliza's head.

As I mentioned, I initially drew her from life, but I also took a photo of her for reference, because she would not have been able to sit for me for the many hours it took me to paint this. Here is that photo:

She's my favorite :)