Me the painter!

I love painting! Its not my strongest skill but what I love about it is at the end when it's finished - I don't really care if its perfect or not. It's more the process I love, mixing the paint, experimenting with brushes and textures and just getting paint everywhere.

I often paint something to go into a room I have designed and in this case I wanted to paint a set of three Chinese faces for a Villa renovation I did not long ago. The client had sent me some reference images and asked if I could create something similar - they didn't expect that I would actually paint them myself...:)

The first was this "lady in red dress". Im not great at painting hands so I really struggled with it but I think in the end it came out ok - this first picture is the main image of the lady on the Blue background....

Once I was happy with the lady's main outline and shading I turned my attention to the background - I had an idea to make some kind of circular patterns in all different sizes and textures. This part was really time consuming but I was having so much fun with it. The picture below I am using the circular end of the head of an electric toothbrush to make the little white circles.

After the background was finished I went back to details on the hands and face of the lady - one thing I always struggled with in art school is knowing when to decide a painting is finished. I tampered with this one for days before deciding it was done...:)

After it was finished I started the 2nd one - this one was to be on a black background and I started with some simple outlining of the face in white oil paint...

And then I added more and more paint...:)) And kind of messed up and nearly threw it away to restart.

But then it was wine time and a little rethink of what direction I wanted to go with it. Here's where I ended up... What do you think? I can't show you them hanging in the room they were intended for yet as the renovation is still under progress but When they are hanging and nicely framed on a big white wall I think they will look cool!

Im not the greatest artist in the world and my paintings will never be worth anything. But the fact that I can spend a few days painting and know that they will be hanging in someone's house as unique one-off artworks makes me kinda satisfied and even a teeny bit proud (even if the hands are a little deformed hahaha).