Friday, May 29, 2015

On the Easel - Step by Step Painting a Mini Mona Lisa in Acrylic in a Day - a.k.a. I'm no Da Vinci


"I'm no Da Vinci," acrylic on panel, 6" x 6".

I thought it might be fun to tackle a few "master" artist works from throughout history as my mini trompe l'oeil works, so here is my first - a torn image of the Mona Lisa, attached with masking tape. I printed my model from my computer, pulling it from Wiki Images, which can be a great resource for good resolution, public domain works.

Below are some of the progression images of the painting. I found that using lots of thin glazes really helped me in achieving a better representation of the colors. Although lacking the luminosity of the real Mona Lisa of course, it's not bad for a super-small version and about 7 hours of work. Thanks for looking!

 I again used a limited color palette for this piece, including: titanium white, payne's gray, chromium green, cadmium yellow and burnt sienna.







I tweaked quite a bit between the above photo and the one below. The shape of her hair and face were adjusted very slightly, as I found that it was too wide in the version above. I also applied some very light glazes of various colors mixed with a tinge of white to soften the overall piece.




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