ARMISTICE | Acrylic Painting

Hi fellow Steemians,
I wanted to share with you another acrylic painting I've done a little while back...

I was asked to do a live painting at a new gallery in downtown Miami to promote it on the opening night. I was really nervous that whole day because, in the midst of all the preparation and the transporting of my art supplies, I still had no idea what I wanted to paint that evening.

When I finished setting up my stage, which consisted of an easel, a blank 36" x 36" wooden board, a bucket of water and a box of paints and brushes, I still had a little time before people starting showing up, so whipped out my sketch book and started sketching some ideas.

This one stuck with me...

I have to admit that I'm very reluctant to do live painting events due to the stress that goes into doing this. At the same time, I have this voice in my head that always reprimands me for not stepping out of my comfort zone and also reminds me that some of my best work was actually done under a lot of stress.

I've done several live painting events in the past and had some great outcomes but also a couple of epic fails, though I didn't let it show... the show must go on.

After the rough outline of the idea, my anxiety subsided and got really into it.

Everything started to come together after I painted the background in red. At this point I was really happy to with where this was going and had a few people stop by to talk to me, which also give me a little time to rest and take a step back to visualize the next step.

The opening event went on for about 3-4 hours. At one point of the evening the gallery was really packed and I was impressed at how the music band outside was bringing so many people in and then my performance kept them inside - curious about the finished results. Unfortunately that didn't happen, by the time band played their last song and the crowd was thinning out I was still nowhere near finished.

A little thing I do at the end of live painting show, I paint my lips with some acrylic paint and kiss the painting.

After the show I brought the painting home and finished it the next day, with all the details that I didn't manage to add during the show. That same day I also found a buyer who saw me work at the show and fell in love with the painting, so now I also had to come up with a good name for it... After some time googling words and synonyms I found "Armistice" - an agreement to cease fire between two opposing sides in war.

And that stuck as well.

"Armistice"

All in all, she's not perfect... there are things that I would have liked to improve... lips, hair, shadows, reflections, etc. But letting go is also part of the gig.

Thank you all for reading!