Love your errors

[Heidi Maiers]

I think the best way to learn and improve your skill level is to work through the frustrations of it all and not settle until you are satisfied. This thread really strikes home with me this month. I spent a couple of months working on this bust for a client when all I had to work from was one ancient photo from 1860 of this woman. I thought it would be easy getting it to look like her from the one angle

[Peter Dransfield]

Bravo Heidi. I think the before and after shots show that the rigour and honesty led to a far superior piece. I am painting my youngest daughter at the moment and had to move not one but both arms yesterday as I realised they were simply in the wrong place and I was so pleased I had seen this. Why I had not seen it before is a mystery all of us experience but once we find a way to 'notice' the mistake there is only one thing to do and correct it no matter how finished the part was.

I am gobsmacked that you can work from photos yet produce such wonderful results. I found making busts difficult enough with the person in front of me and with a large pair of calipers to take measurements with so how you do it with only one or two photo references with not even a full range of round the head shots is beyond me and I take my hat off to you.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Heidi, I totally agree with this:

[QUOTE=Heidi Maiers]I think the best way to learn and improve your skill level is to work through the frustrations of it all and not settle until you are satisfied. . . . It

[Heidi Maiers]

Thanks you two! Yes, most of it is just my best guess judging from that one photo of what the rest of her might look like. That, and very good descriptions from relatives, which helped a lot. At minimum, she at least had to look convincingly human, and the rework helped there.

The smarter thing to do would have been to find a friend with similar bone structure and had her model for me. I had been studying faces like crazy all month in all of the meetings i have to attend during the week - looking for planes and junctures that are common to all faces, but slightly different on each. Recommend that everyone does that - it's a real eye opener (just don't let people catch you staring at them!)

[Julie Deane]

Originally Posted by Heidi Maiers

I had been studying faces like crazy all month in all of the meetings i have to attend during the week - looking for planes and junctures that are common to all faces, but slightly different on each. Recommend that everyone does that - it's a real eye opener (just don't let people catch you staring at them!)

LOL - Guilty! After doing a difficult portrait with poor references, I caught myself staring at certain types of mouths to get a better idea of facial construction.
Must have been very disconcerting for the poor store cashiers...