maria pace wynters

If you’re a regular round here you’ll already know I love Canada based artist Maria Pace-Wynters‘ vibrant, beautiful paintings. I was recently so inspired by her style of portraiture that I was moved to create a painting of my own in a similar vein.

Like many of us, she has been making art since childhood, and also perhaps like many of us found that growing up led her away from the natural spontenaity and non judgement of childhood creating, that ‘life’ just sort of took over. Thankfully she didn’t let it stop her! She includes this quote on both her website and Etsy shop profile as a great reminder:

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

Apart from the glorious colours, I really admire how she has perfected the balance between loose lines and colour patches, and detailed focused areas.

Also her heavenly, voluptuous flowers and foliage, particularly poppies. There is something so luxurious and decadent about her paintings.

As a mother her daughters are clearly a source of inspiration to her ~ many of her paintings feature impish young faces. The circus is also a common theme.

She has plenty of options available in her Etsy shop, from originals to postcards and art print blocks.

This lady appeared on Thursday. She is heading in the direction of the faces in my head I talked about yesterday. In the interests of full disclosure I am including the image that inspired her; as you will see it’s pretty similar. I’ve loved the Maria Pace Wynters painting below for ages ~ colours, composition, style, elements ~ and wanted to understand with my own hand how to capture that kind of loose but powerful image. I didn’t set out to copy it as such, but in the end I did use her painting to inform how and where I put colour down, mainly for the face.

So here is Maria Pace Wynters’ visual feast, titled ‘The Spanish Poppy’:

And here is a step by step of my version, which I’ve called ‘Drama Queen’ as it just popped into my head and seemed fitting:

I taped some of my lovely new A3 360gsm paper to my desk and started with a rough sketch.

I used the principle I saw on the Agnes-Cecile video of working from light to dark; it makes total sense and puts certain paintings I’ve done in the past into a new perspective {ie. ohhhhhh, so THAT’S why it didn’t work!}! I realise this is probably one of those fundamentals of painting that just passed me by…

I had totally forgotten how liberating painting on paper is; psychologically I can be freer because it’s not as ‘important’ as a canvas. And while I’m trying out new things it allows me to do so without feeling they must all be perfect. That, people, is progress. Not to mention that when you take the pressure off, lo! The paintings seem to come out better!

I did have to go back in and completely redo her eyes; she was so cross eyed! I think it’s better now but the painting doesn’t seem to photograph as well as it looks in actual real life.

Anyway, here she is:

I may add some further details but I’m happy with her as she is for now. Very happy actually. Yay.