Initially I drew a rather heavy handed, exaggerated sketch of my husband, Ken. The painting was made while looking at the sketch, rather than at Ken in person. I find this allows me great latitude to break the rules while painting. When looking at a live model, it is usually my desire to get some type of realistic representation. It frees me up to paint from a drawing or a photo. It is an exaggeration of an exaggeration. Then I can get to a feeling rather than being confined to a visual representation based upon accuracy of color and form. This painting was started with oil sticks and still has a thick texture to it. I worked into the painting, continually darkening the figure to obscure as much as possible and still retain the basic features. I found by using black and white, I could rely upon the essence of the facial expression, rather than color to define the image. There is a certain dramatic effect I can gain by removing color, much as a black and white photograph is often more haunting or dramatic than a colored one. Often I keep paintings in my studio for a while to see if I feel I still want to work on them. After some time I added the colored oil pastel. I wanted it to accentuate the line and give him life. Another Revelation of the man within.
