Can You Paint a Portrait in 30 Minutes?
This was a challenge I took up yesterday--to paint an acrylic portrait in half an hour.
I usually take 30 hours to do a portrait, but I wanted to see if I could capture the essence of the subject--in this case, my wife within that time. I went over by just a couple minutes, but here is what I painted and how I painted it, all recorded real time in video. Enjoy!
What do you think? This is my first attempt at something like this. Should I do more?
All the best,
If you like this post, please upvote, follow and resteem. I post regularly on art, tips on painting and drawing, and encouraging thoughts.
See more of my artwork at: MattPhilleo.com
Quick portraits can be full of energy and spontaneity. Yours is very nice.
Thank you, Joe!
I love it! It looks great to me.
My question is - what did this challenge do to you? Will it change something for your future projects? How much is normally on the canvas after only 30min?
Are you happy with the result or do you feel you should spend another 29.5 hours on it?
As you can see, my questions have nothing to do with painting, LOL, but I seriously am fascinated by this experiment.
If you paint just for you, because it's a passion and maybe also a sort of meditation, you probably enjoy every second of the 30 hours and won't want to change a thing.
But if you paint for results - maybe you're living from being a painter - you may have just had a life- and business changing experience about how you can achieve the same results in much less time.
Please share! :)
These are very thoughtful questions. I appreciate the time you took to ponder...
I am happy with how it looks for 30 minutes, but honestly, not happy with it entirely as its own work. There are features in the face that are not as accurate as I'd like, in comparison to the reference photo. So giving myself a deadline was freeing in a sense--because it caused me to work in a looser, less constrained method ( I normally sketch a composition for an hour and use glazes of color, which takes a lot of patience.) But, ironically, it was less freeing, in that at the end, the clock (and I had an appointment where I had to leave the studio ) kept me from addressing a few details that were off. I put more time into it today--another 30 minutes, and it looks more like my wife now, but it is still not as good as I'd like.
But if I consider this as a portrait study, and do some exercises like this from time to time, it may help me get faster as a painter, and hopefully without sacrificing quality.
Thanks again!