that one picture

Do you ever have an idea that you just keep coming back to because it never quite comes out right?

That picture you go back to redraw time after time after time because it is never quite what you had in mind? 

I have one. 

My sister took this picture of me the summer after I graduated high school. It's a thing we used to do. I'm far too short to even dream of being a model and she likes to wear a dumb hat while making me stand in dumb positions and making fun of my eyebrows. So, we did photo shoots. 

I love portraiture and practicing on myself is convenient because I don't have to worry about hurting my own feelings if I make myself ugly. But this damn picture, no matter how much I try to lay it to rest, keeps knocking around in my brain that I want to do something with it. 

I don't have every sketch I did of this picture, but this is one of the early ones. Just a quick and sloppy scribble with water soluble oil pastels. Those were my obsession that entire summer. I actually like how the hair looks a lot. 

A couple years later I got myself a drawing tablet and wanted to do digital art. This was one of my early sketches? tracings? hybrid of both? Probably hybrid of both. I actually made this drawing into a full on paper doll set, it has sadly been lost to the ages.

Most recently, an acrylic and oil hybrid painting. Boy oh boy do I see now why they set up exhibits on artists in stages. 

Between the three of them, I am happy with the hair on the first, the arms and torso on the second and from the hips down on the third. I probably would have nailed it on the third if I had stuck with either oil or acrylic. I mix the two a lot in portraits to get really fun abstract background with the acrylic before playing with oil for the focal point. This ended up a really odd mix of soft and sharp details which is so close to working for me, but doesn't. Which means... I'll be back to this picture again...