Portrait of a black child
Value study
When I was a kid learning to paint, I used to plan my projects rummaging through piles of images that came from different sources. Some of the images came from calendars but most came from magazines. I remember the very first painting I did came from a calendar. It was an early Autumn scene, an open field landscape with tall golden grasses.
I don’t need to look through magazines or ask family and friends for their old calendars to find something interesting to paint. We have the internet! Although I can’t post any reference images I use from the internet because of copyrights, I can post my projects.
That leads me to a beautiful black and white image I found of this cute little black boy. The black and white image gave me the opportunity to practice getting the values right, (shades of light and dark). I also got to work on a portrait, my favorite area of interest to paint.
In this painting exercise, I started to find the process I was looking for. I tend to be very detailed oriented, but I don’t want my paintings to look like a photograph, something I once strived for years and years ago. I like loose brush strokes. Right now, my role model is John Singer Sargent.
