This small piece will be a study for a much larger work with numerous figures more typical of my style. I don’t often paint human figures without facial features and I wanted to ensure that I captured the essence and the relative textures sufficiently before embarking on the grander canvas. There is no worse feeling than spending countless hours on a large work only to realize mid-way through that it is ill-conceived or incorrect in some way and there is simply no salvaging it. No option at that time but to flip a coin as to slogging on or giving up the metaphorical ghost.
Working from a personal photograph, I don’t typically use the “grid method” but I went with it for this one in order to speed things up. I also wanted to ensure that the proportions were correct for this tiny scale. I don’t intend to spend too much time on the drawing process. I am using a small wooden panel (13″ x 11″) that I picked up one afternoon from the NUNU Arts & Culture Collective in Arnaudville, LA. I am really fond of that small Acadiana town and this art collective is a really dynamite organization. The image is of a masked celebrant during rural south Louisiana’s Courir de Mardi Gras.