New Portrait - Lino Cut preparation

I am working on preparing a Lino Cut for my next portrait.  The portrait features a friend of mine, who is also an art student.  My friend is an elegant, tall Ethiopian man with a great sense of humour and temperament.  He is a painters and sculptors delight as his features are unique and interesting.
Mr Friend works in a kitchen in a big hotel and I wanted to represent him in his chef's hat.  I took his photo, did some work with it in Illustrator and Photoshop, and created this initial draft for the lino cut.

I then traced the image onto tracing paper doing some additional adjustments to get it the way I wanted it to look.  I then transferred that image onto the lino and cut the image.  Here is the first cut.

You'll notice it's reversed.  I like this image as a portrait in itself.  I will ink this in the next few days and then post the final portrait.


Brian

New Portrait

My friend Marg


I took the photo of Marg when we were at Lake Simcoe.  The sun was streaming in over her right shoulder.  She was tanned and the wind gave her hair a rather wild look,  as well, the saturation of sunlight bleached her blonde hair white.  I thought she looked relaxed and happy.  

Marg oil on canvas 8x10in/20x25cm

That was the essence of what I tried to capture in this portrait of Marg.

Brian

Welcome to The Portrait Project Toronto - First Posting

Welcome!  I'm excited to be able to make the first posting to the Portrait Project Toronto Blog.  This is a new experience for me - blogging - so I will ask everyone who visits the site to bear with me as I get used to this and, more than likely, make changes to the blog as I go along.
My intent with this blog is simple -

First, I want to use it to promote the idea of The Portrait Project Toronto.  I hope that, by the time the final gallery show of portraits opens - sometime in May 2011 - I will have created a body of portrait works that achieves my intended goal - to be as diverse in look as the City of Toronto is in ethnic and cultural mix (please see the "About The Portrait Project" page for details).


Second, I want to keep those who have photo's taken and those who are just curious or interested, up to date with portrait creation progress.  I will do that by updating the "Portrait" page with new portraits, perhaps only partially completed portraits so I don't give away who the sitter might be - just a little tease to keep everyone interested.


Lastly, I am planning to post at least twice a week with an update, with a special message, or with a demo of works in progress.  


My ultimate goal, is to create Portrait Projects in other cities and to link them all together (The Portrait Project Vancouver;  The Portrait Project Saskatoon, etc.).  If you are an artist in another town or city and want to participate, let me know.


Thank you and I hope you enjoy The Portrait Project Toronto,


Brian