In Scott Nickerson's portrait class I took another improvement step on my journey. Lisa, our beautiful model is an American who has a passion for India and visits there often. After the first 45min of painting an initial image of Lisa, Scott visited my easel and asked me why I placed her head in the middle of the canvas. Having no good reason I just offered a dumb look while remembering earlier lessons with Bob Glaisek where we had the same conversation. So I wiped the initial image and placed the head at about 1/3 of the height and width of the canvas - the classic positioning for the object of interest.
Now the painting moved along over the next few weeks and I was pleased with the image - but what to do with the background shape? And why are her hands in this position? This is one of my first paintings where I even considered the 'story' of the painting. At my show I will display all the alternatives that I considered and as you can see I left the background blank after all. This was a milestone in my thinking (planning) about composition in an additional dimension - beyond shapes and including a story.
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