Last night I spent a little time looking at reference photos, and decided on profiles as a theme for this week. I set up a note in my phone designating a reference for each day, and made some other notes about things I’d like to get stuck into if I manage to give myself more time.
This morning I felt really positive about this experimental hack of my own brain, and got set up to start drawing and then painting quite early.
And wouldn’t you know it, and bunch of shouty men turned up to finally deal with the various trees in the neighbourhood that were felled during the storm a few weeks ago.
They parked the wood chipper right outside my house, and left the fucking thing running all day.
I can hack my own brain as much as I like, but I will never overcome the noise sensitivity. I’m not going to beat myself up about that.
In the end I did manage to get going, and got my morning sketch and oil portrait done, and it was enough to just paint with crazy going on outside.
I do think the little plan is very helpful, tho, it definitely removes the usual Resistance.
Today’s reference is new to me, and this is my first outing with it, apart from the warm-up sketch. It occurs to me that this time last year there is no way I would have gone straight to painting this portrait without doing several practise sketches, and so it’s nice to notice the result of all those sketchbook pages of practise paying off.
The reference is actually in black and white, so invention was necessary in terms of colour choices. I stuck with the Zorn Palette for simplicity. I just love that you can get so many colour from a red (vermillion), a yellow (ochre) and black and white.
Til the morn,
Suzanne
416/500
Thrummie Bizzum 
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