Portrait Paintings

We just finished portrait paintings in my basic painting class. What my professor did for this assignment was take photos of each of the people in my class and print them out. Then each of us (the students) drew from the pile of pictures she took and had to paint that person. We could take on whatever kind of concept we wanted with the portraits and didn't have to paint each other realistically. The girl that I picked had really cool hair that reminded me of a halo. That and the fact that her head was slightly tilted to one side and faced the camera head on inspired me to paint her like a Madonna or an early Christian icon painting. While painting, I also drew a lot of influence from the art nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha because his works contain a lot of haloed or framed women.

Here's my painting.


This was painted with oil on a wood panel that I built myself. I love how the wood panel is so appropriate for my concept: all of those early Christian icon paintings were usually painted on wood for alterpieces. Also, the student that I painted is an art history major so there is that reference to her in the painting.

Madonna and Child painting.


This and the early Christian icon painting bellow both have a lot of gold in the background. This was done so that the figures are pushed forward as well as making them look like they are floating on golden light when sunlight hits the background.

Early Christian icon painting.


Here's a good example of and Alphonse Mucha print.