Evolve: an Oil Portrait

Recently, I painted a portrait of @amberjyang. I did the work in oil on archival quality Strathmore oil paper. The painted area measures about seven by eleven inches. Below you can see the sketch where I begin to lay the first bits of color down.

For the last couple of years, I've mostly been painting so-so abstracts and messing with AI art, so my skills felt rusty. The initial brushwork wasn't coming out great, so I switched to knife painting, and that didn't really help. When the piece got to the point illustrated below, I was ready to scrap the whole thing and pretend the project never happened.

Instead of scrapping the project, I persisted. Fortunately, oil paint is very forgiving. So I worked on it slowly, here and there, and eventually got the work to a point I was happy with. The reference photo I used included a tree into which the word 'Evolve' had been carved, so I made that stand out and tried to keep everything balanced by using a limited palette. Though technically imperfect, I love the energy that came through in the painting's final form.

Over the years, I've painted several friends. Some portraits, some figures, one action scene involving gardening. But this work stands apart because it was painted without the subject's knowledge. That meant it was a total surprise when I showed it to @amberjyang. When the time came to do that, I felt acutely self-conscious, like maybe it was too much, or was the kind of thing that's better in the imagination than in real life. I didn't really know what to expect, but she liked it, and there wasn't any awkwardness. When the work dries, I'll be sending it to her so she can see it in person.

All things considered, I consider the portrait an artistic success.

Read my novels:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS.
• The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.

See my NFTs:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
• History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
• Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.