"I don't need a grid" I say to myself, "I'll just paint it freehand, like Leonardo Da Vinci or Van Gogh or Picasso..." .
I mean, really, why would I need a grid? How tough can it be?
4 hours into it and I'm looking to MOBA for inspiration, or at least some reassurance, there's none.
It's a tricky thing, this capturing a resemblance. I look at the reference photo. Back to my painting. In pose they're somewhat the same. I'm painting a child, 2 years old. And she has an ear (visible), a nose, 2 eyes, a mouth, all the things that my painting has. But my painting isn't her. Not by a long shot. Not even slightly, not even in the dark. And I try and discover what's gone so terribly wrong.
All the major visible organs. Check. Position. Check. Colors? I'll worry about those later.
There was a moment when I was painting her when she looked exactly like her mother. Well, not exactly, but I could see her. From there she became uglier and uglier, until now, when she resembles no one so much as Doug McKenzie (on the right) or an acid-induced Michael Jackson.
So it's back upstairs, into the photoshop to create the grid, copy it to some graph paper (and verify there's a resemblance...) then go downstairs and see where things went sideways.
"I just need practice" I reassure myself, although there's no reassurance standing in front of this monster I've created...