When I started painting portraits in earnest about 11 years ago I painted the portrait of a girl called Theresa. She sat in a chair, illuminated by a strong light and had striking red hair. The finished work, painted in acrylic, although a good likeness and vibrant in colour, depicted her with a somewhat fierce expression.
My sister saw the pic and asked if she was "really grumpy"! I said that, in fact, she was quite the opposite, and was calm and polite. This gave me the idea for the sequence shown here.
As you can see it is a series of six portraits. The first shows a conventional face and expression, the next a broad smile, but the hair is a little unkempt, by picture 3 the hair is coming alive, medusa-like, and the tentacles gradually progress in their behaviour until the girl's head is flung out of frame!
So, a little unconventional, but hopefully dramatic and good fun. The sequence was created by painting the 1st picture independently of the others. Having established this initial image, I then marked the positions of the eyes nose and mouth, in pencil, on 5 other sheets of paper. Theresa then sat for a further sitting during which she smiled for painting 2, and I painted for 10 minutes or so, then she would adopt a look of confusion / curiosity for picture 3, again I painted for 10 minutes. She would change her expression, I would change the picture I was working on and so the process cycled round and round until I had established the sequence. This quick 10 minute-at-a-time method kept my work spontaneous and helped prevent the sitter from adopting a somewhat fixed / unnatural expression (which can sometimes happen if one sits absolutely still for too long).
This sequence is now available as a print here or on a mousemat / shirt / card etc as you can see below:
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