Leanne Shawler, Artist

My challenge is done! This is the last portrait of my 52 Portraits in 52 Weeks challenge! I used a photo from unsplash to get the uptilted head angles correct. In the photo the eyes were closed, and I wanted them open. I realized at once I hadn't sketched the chin correctly but can you see what else is off? Yeah, I didn't either. Stay tuned. I went ahead and painted. My base colors were Liquitex cadmium-free red, smalt blue, cadmium yellow and titanium white in heavy body Golden acrylic paint. Her lips look fantastic, but the angle was wrong. Also she looked pretty grouchy and there was something else... but doesn't her nose look great? OK, so her right eye is half an inch south of her left. I painted over it entirely and sketched using a brown Stabilo-All pencil before painting it back in. I put some shadows in using watercolors (Moonglow, Shadow Violet by Daniel Smith) and then created a galaxy like sky using three different Martha Stewart paints in blu...

I love rose milk tea. It tastes so good. Since a place that sells it opened up on my way to work, I've been treating myself. Until recently. I don't love that it's in a plastic cup, sealed with plastic film and accessible to drink via a plastic straw. Sure, I could buy a reusable boba straw as I already have other reusable straws, but that's still a lot of plastic. For a while I've been taking my own cup to Starbucks to put my caramel frappuchino into -- and getting 10c off as well. However, I've been told I can't bring my own cup to get rose milk tea and I can't in good conscience continue with all that plastic. So for the last week, I've been making my own rose milk tea. I took a look at making iced tea and various rose milk tea recipes on the internet. I've been playing and to continue to play with the proportions a bit. And it's delicious. Just as good as, if not better, than a purchased drink. First thing in the morning, I ma...

This will be a short post, as I forgot to take progress shots. Oops. I used white and a selection of green Arteza acrylics, Golden Titanium Buff fluid acrylic, Jane Davenport's dark blue matte acrylic paint and two of her Ultimate brush pens (Suede and Aquadisiac), and a cream/ivory Posca pen. I, ah, may have up the brightness a bit much. Last one is going to be a two page spread and then it's off to play with other things, I already have a large 36" x 36" blank canvas waiting for me on an easel, and I have to varnish the finished Mary Magdalene painting...

This challenge is supposed to be 52 Portraits in 52 Weeks. Well, I am currently running ahead by about a month. I've two more to go! This one was inspired by a Facebook post sharing the story of a woman's skull with a golden orb embedded in her eye socket. It's the oldest artificial eye ever found. It's 5,000 years old. The woman was six foot tall. Well, this provoked a response in me -- an old one -- the impulse to take a snippet of history and make a whole novel out of it. In the end, an outline of her story was written into her hair. The painting started with some white gesso to strengthen the paper as it had been torn, and then I had some left over gold gesso on a brush as I had painted the sides of my Mary Magdalene painting. Then a pencil sketch: I started out with Jane Davenport's Matchmaker paint, using the darkest tones initially, and Titanium white for the highlights. I added another shade of the Matchmaker paint and a lot of Golden Fluid A...

This started out more or less following along with Emma Petitt 's activity as part of the LifeBook Summit that was held just prior to LifeBook 2019 going on sale. Initially, I followed her steps -- which was very loose sketching and loose paint strokes. The face was almost finished when I decided it was all wrong and started most of the way over. Not only that but pages got stuck together and tore, so I had to glue two pages together as well. After that, I covered up all the words, redrew the face using a different reference image and repainted it, using the same colors I had picked out before: yellow ochre, light portrait pink, teal, quidacridone nickel azo gold and white gesso for mixing. Teal and gesso were the only colors that Emma used: she used a different yellow, red and pink. Emma left hers with a lot of white showing, adding to that loose look but I kept on going (of course) and wrote some words in orange Inktense pencil in her shirt to finish it up. I brushed over ...

Saint Who now? Well, I was intending the next portrait to be Saint Gobnait (Irish patron saint of bees) but she ended up here instead, even though this was just meant to be playing with Jane Davenport's new paint. It's called Matchmaker paint and starts with a base color (in the middle) and darkening and lightening paint (I'm sure you can figure out which is which). In a video demonstration (you can find it on YouTube) she showed how she uses this as a base color for a face and then used her other products to provide shadows and highlights. As an aside, she mentioned you could mix the three colors to create the shadows and lights as well. Right, I thought, let's give that a go. I started with a sketch. And then put down the first layers. I used just the darkening drops for the darkest darks and just the lightening drops for the lightest lights and then various mixes of each in between. Not exactly done yet... so I added more layers, lightening up much...

Jane Davenport's new collection is out, so I splurged on some Dramasticks (ok and a few other things), which is like a really soft oil pastel that dries hard. I had a background already made with leftover paint from the previous portrait (Rose Girl) which was a bit of Jane Davenport paint with a lot of Golden heavy body Titanium White mixed in. It ended up with a square of Cobalt Violet hue in the corner too. (Yummy packaging, am I right?) I started with a pastel pencil sketch over the paint. As I started adding some chalk pastel for shading (not Jane's), I realized that the paint was too slick, so I fixed most of the lines with some clear gesso and added more across the surface of her face so the pastel would have something to grip onto. I found the drama sticks both deliciously moveable and really messy. I really would recommend using Q-tips, tortillions (those pointy paper sticks) or makeup sponges. Jane's line also has something, but of course I didn...

I finished this one in almost one sitting. OK, so I had some leftover paint from the Mary Magdalene portrait and put that down in a loose face shape along with some leftover green because you can't put paint back into a tube. A couple of  nights later, my husband wanted to watch some soccer thing so I sat down to paint and finished it all except for the final touches. So progress photos? You've seen them. It. Just the one. I'd had a really stressful day and it all melted away with the meditative strokes. First in painting the face, which I attempted to do the way Melanie Rivers does. (There's a free lesson on her website. Love her paintings.) I didn't exactly follow and sort of meandered off into my own thing a bit. I didn't use a reference photo either. Then with the repetitive strokes of laying down paint for all the petals and mixing in the white. All the stress was gone and I was in a happy place. These are the supplies I used. I didn't even cl...

OK I am going to be upfront honest. This one isn't exactly finished, but the rest of the painting is not a portrait so I'll be working on it between the other two. I stumbled across a theory that Mary of Magdala was a nickname, like Peter the Rock. She was Mary the Tower. However, there is much disagreement on this. Not that it matters because inspiration had well and truly struck. This one is not in my journal but on canvas. I used a Lyra pencil to sketch in the face using a reference image from unsplash. As you can see, using the Lyra pencil I was able to start to do some shading. Then using the leftover paint from portrait number 44, I put down some first layers. But I didn't like her eyes being closed. Mary of Magdala had her eyes opened at the tomb and preached the good news. She was the apostle to the apostles. I painted additional layers,  using shades of raw sienna and burnt sienna. So, I used a reference photo that I had taken for placement of the eye...

I was going through my basket of washi tape, looking for good colors to use in my Fall Studio Yearbook, and I came across four Faber Castell Pitt pens. I checked and sure enough, they were duplicates. So I thought I would challenge myself to use those (and a white Posca pen and a Lyra water-soluble pencil) to do a portrait. First, the sketch. I started with the lightest shadow color and discovered it was almost dried out. Oops. Did I go use the other one in the same color that I had? Of course not. I kept going with the others and used the white Posca pen to blend it together. I did this on a piece of regular copy paper so it quickly soaked up the ink making it difficult to move and blend. Gessoing the paper first might have been a good idea, but oh well. And here's the result: It's a self portrait but I couldn't be bothered to figure out the glasses (and teal wasn't one of the colors anyway) so I have left it as is. I have another one that is well u...

This portrait is based on a LifeBook 2018 lesson where we learned what our archetypes are. They aren't constant and are supposed to change. So I took the provided quiz and decided to do a portrait featuring two of my archetypes (as of the beginning of this month): the Engineer and the Eternal Child. Did I find this concept particularly helpful? Not at this surface, introductory, level. Perhaps they are of use if you dive deep into them, but this wasn't that. However, painting two of them was fun. I went back to my trusted Golden Heavy Body paints and put together a palette from Titanium White, Cerulean Blue Deep, Cadmium Yellow and Quidacridone Magenta. I sketched out a face on page where I'd been "wiping off" paint brushes and the like, and glued down some collage pieces around the edge. One side of the face is the "Eternal Child" I started out with Pebbles-like pigtails and greens and purples. She's even wearing a Peter Pan collar. (A...

This piece was inspired by an essay "echoes of the same" in the collection of the same name by Nicki Salcedo . I met Nicki at an Atlanta Romance Writers conference many years ago (wow, that makes us both sound ancient so maybe not that long ago), before I was published in romance. She was sweet and kind and encouraging. She was inclusive and hospitable to someone who had come from San Diego, and being introverted, I remember hiding out in my room a lot. I've admired and followed her ever since, but only recently read "echoes of the same" . (I highly recommend it.) Her essay really struck me -- which is probably a sign that I should be diversifying my reading outside of SF/Fantasy and theology a bit more -- and an image came into my mind that I knew I had to paint. Here's the quote this portrait is inspired by: "Our palms, if raised, look the same. All of us with lines that tell the future. Lines from where we make a fist. Those palms used to be a ...

I've been taking LifeBook 2018 this year, dipping my toe in where I have been really caught by one of the themes, or the teacher's lesson for that week. This was the case with Ivy Newport 's lesson last week. The floating blue hair of one of the figures on her art journal spread really captured my attention. In the end, I believe I followed along a little too closely and came really close to declaring that I wouldn't count it, but instead I am choosing to acknowledge the influence of Ivy's lesson as you will see in a short while. Hers was a two page spread. I used an image from Unsplash as a reference for a portrait that dominated the page. I followed along with Ivy's collaging and using watercolor. (She also used acrylic paint, but I only brought a Posca paint pen along with me for fine details.) I spent the weekend away and this came with me. I had prepped the page before we left with gesso (mostly covering wipe-off paint underneath). Then I collaged...

I seem to be slowing down a bit. In fact, I might just be even and not ahead anymore in this 52 Portraits in 52 Weeks challenge. But after this, only 13 more portraits to go! I can do this. (she says, giving herself a pep talk) Recently, I rewatched The Greatest Showman and remembered reading about the real Jenny Lind, and how she described herself as having mousy hair and a potato nose. Certainly not the striking redhead as portrayed in the movie. And by all accounts, a rather different personality. I went and looked her up on the internets and found a painting and a couple of photographs of her and so I began this portrait of the real Jenny Lind, using the painting found on Wikimedia Commons as the base. Although, as you might guess, real is in the eye of the beholder. (I know, I'm so post-modern), but once I drew her left-handed with my Lyra pencil, she became a wee bit wonky. Wonkier than she had been previously depicted, anyway. The next step was pick colors. I had r...