Jen

by David R. Darrow 8" x 16" (20.3cm x 40.6cm) Oil on Stretched Canvas SOLD Collection of Renée Richardson Washington, DC – USA

About This Painting

I try to make a habit of painting strangers. In fact, my business card which bears a sample of my oil portraiture makes reference to my interest in strangers with my tag line "Beautiful Strangers: Oil Portraits of Friends I Don't Know."

Now, usually I reserve my canvas manipulations for the likenesses of people I have met and asked to paint. But the other day I painted a total stranger as an alla prima painting demonstration for the viewers of my almost-daily painting show Dave The Painting Guy (Google It).

1 of the 4 video clips of this painting being created can be found at: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/403211 

"Jen," as I have since discovered her name to be, left a comment on one of my painting photos on Flickr.com, and so I jumped over to her collection to look at her paintings. Seeing only thumbnails there, I thought that one of the shots was a wonderful painting so I clicked the thumbnail to look at it more closely only to discover that it was actually an out of focus cell-phone picture she had shot.

So, I wrote to her and asked if I could do a painting... an artistic interpretation of that shot. She gave me permission, and the rest is history.

It was a fun painting to do... the angle of the head, the elegant lines of her neck, her curly hair. Beautiful women make for beautiful paintings.  ◙

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