Kimberley (with Owl) / Favour the Bold

Kimberley (with Owl)

36" x 48", oil on canvas, 2019, private collection

After months of hemming and hawing, I decided late (almost too late; the deadline was April 26) in 2018 to try to get into the Kingston Prize for portraiture. My previous entries were (in chronological order: my Self Portrait (Shoulders) in 2011, George Emlaw in 2013, George Meanwell (Concertina) in 2015, and Kelsey with Accordion in 2017. None of them got into the show. Too many Georges? Too many parentheticals? Not good enough work?

By the end of January this year I decided to reach out to an old friend and ask her if she'd like to be my subject for what could very well be my last attempt. She happily agreed.

I've known Kimberley Tardik (née Black) since high school –right around the time I started painting in watercolours– and I've painted her several times in the 1990s: Mythological, Implies, clear, and in these two paintings featuring the Scarborough Bluffs. Since 2018 marked my 30th anniversary of painting I thought it would be appropriate to paint one of the first models I used once I started shooting my own photo reference...and a good friend.

Early sketches.

In my initial sketch for this portrait I had an owl perched on her far arm. This was a sort of spontaneous idea, but it was easy enough to reverse-engineer the concept and discover that it was, ultimately, very appropriate: owls represent wisdom and that was one of Kimberley's traits I felt would be best to feature in this portrait of her.
Since neither of us had an actual owl, I composed the picture in Photoshop using an great horned owl from a Google search.

One element I completely forgot about when compositing the image in Photoshop was the floating empty picture frame in the little thumbnail –which is an interesting idea and harkens back to The Fiercest Calm– but I'm glad I did because I like the radiating lines making all those interesting shapes better.

And, that's right: this painting has TWO titles. They both suit it, so you can pick one or the other or both. Enjoy!

Pencils.

In my Photoshop composite I lowered Kim's arm so that the eyes of the owl "perched" on it would line up with hers. I made her left eye the centre for all the radiating lines (with that circular shape centered more on her right eye). I also colored the background in PS to give me a road map later on. Already I could tell that leather jacket was going to be fun to paint.

Off-colour colours for interest later.

Because of my peculiar paint application, there are always areas throughout my paintings where the coverage isn't perfectly solid and the surface underneath shows through a bit, so I use orange acrylic as a ground colour (rather than having the white of the primed canvas show through). I also like laying down some dark colours to give interest and depth to the light colours that will be painted over top. It adds some variety to the orange ground.

Skin tones next.

Leather!

I haven't had the opportunity to paint much leather –the most was probably my Dance Partners series from my WWI project in 2014. One of my favourite textures/materials to paint in watercolours is denim and, with this painting, I discovered I really like painting leather in oils. The exciting challenge is to see if I can paint these textures convincingly.

The backgrounds begins.

I wanted the background to be abstract but still evocative of ground and sky via the colours.

Some art nouveau curls.

I did a doodle to remind myself to add some Alfons Mucha-inspired curls to the ends of Kim's hair and then forgot about it for a long time. But then I remembered and I'm glad I did. Also, at this stage, I lightened the blue areas and made a slight gradation, getting lighter towards the centre.

The owl begins!

Lotsa feathers and lotsa details, but I love a challenge.

Nearly there...

Something had been missing and it was bugging me for a long time...then I realized I had to cool down the shadow areas on the skin, so I added a slight glaze of light blue to Kim's face and hand.

Owl detail.

It was extremely fun painting this horned owl and I can foresee painting owls again. The only thing I would change about the owl is adding a slight "shadow" glaze to the bird to make him seem more integrated into the scene...but I've already submitted the painting, so I probably won't do any more tweaking. Probably.