I tend to show you finished pieces when I post them. I thought I would do a post where I show you something in process, while I have work to finish on it. This acrylic painting is an exercise to recreate, as I see fit, the 1907 Pablo Picasso portrait at the bottom of this post. It’s very famous painting I’m sure you recognize it.
This will not be a reproduction or an attempt at a forgery. I neither have the talent, experience, or will to want that. The exercise is for me to mimic his style, use of color, and general composition. I chose this one as it is a style I love, I love most of Picasso’s body of work. But I don’t like the man behind the art at all. He was an atrocious person. That has made doing the portrait easier. I don’t normally paint portraits and I wanted to challenge myself by doing portraits for a while.
When I work on this one next I’ll lighten the left background and darken the right background. I’ll work on the deepening of his face colors. His cheeks, nose, jaw and his forehead especially. I’ll also work on the olive details on his shirt and “dirty” the white of his shirt.
The image above includes all those additions. I will stop with this exercise for the most part. I will make the outlines lines stronger where I feel they need to be more continuous, but my acrylic art pen is empty right now. I’ve chosen a shiny silver frame for this one to pull on the lighter tones in the painting.
