A scanned peek at Kimberly With Roses in progress

A scanned detail from a portion of my egg tempera spiritual portrait in progress of Kimberly with roses, egg tempera on true gesso panel

It's been almost a year since I've offered the last update on this painting on Mona Conner Portraits, but I've actually been slowly progressing with this egg tempera portrait of Kimberly over at my spiritual portrait series blog, Grander Joy of Spirit.  Large egg tempera portraits on panel do take a lot of time and patience, but are rewarding for their depth, and I thought it would be interesting to share this scanned detail, since recently I was discussing the differences in quality between a scan and a camera shot of my pastel self-portrait at age 3.  My own scanner bed is small, so it only captures about 12" x 9" from this 19 1/2" x 15 1/4" painting in progress, but it reveals to you the paint strokes, details, and depth, much better than a camera shot with my 5 mg camera, which tends to flatten out the values.  It also reveals the areas that I am still blending with many thin layers of egg tempera.

November Update

Due to several things I'm developing offline this Fall, it's been a while since my last post, but rest assured, I welcome any portrait commission requests you may have.  Until my next portrait posts here, please also feel welcomed to check out my progress reports on "Kimberly With Roses", my spiritual portrait in egg tempera on Grander Joy of Spirit.

A Word about my Spiritual Portrait Series and what's next

Some of you may have noticed that I blog according to several themes, and perhaps it's helpful to discuss why I prefer to separate my art into several blogs, and how sometimes these themes overlap.

Today I've posted another update for "Kimberly With Roses" on it's regular blog at this link: Grander Joy of Spirit, so if you'd like to follow my progress with this, "The 'Mary' in Kimberly", and other spiritually themed portraits, they will mainly continue to unfold there. While I may occasionally post an update here periodically on one of my spiritual portraits, with my spiritual portrait series in particular, which has continued for almost two years now, I am actually unfolding and at times discussing on-blog a personal theme through an ongoing body of work in portraiture for a gallery or museum show. So, I feel it is more meaningful in the long run to develop this theme in it's own context, and separately from this blog which is more about portraits and portrait commissions in general. I may, for example, get more into discussion of technical aspects of painting here on the portrait blog, whereas on Grander Joy of Spirit I'm attempting to zero in on the spiritual aspects and responses from viewers on this level.

So far, my spiritual portrait series has been done completely uncommissioned, and only with the cooperation of several interested friends who have willingly and kindly posed for me for this purpose. However, I am also quite open to the opportunity of creating a commissioned spiritual portrait if anyone desires one. I also have a miniature painting blog, where occasionally I do a portrait in miniature, and this is another source of overlap where I may sometimes post dually.

Right now I'm in the midst of preparing an artist grant application, just to help me to be able to continue with the spiritual portrait series, but as soon as it's finished I'll be posting something new here too.