Thanks you guys for all the feedback about the little video I made. I'm already thinking on doing another one, maybe this time a real video, we'll see!

I got  my new art supplies I ordered online and have been working on a few more paintings during the weekend. Like this:

I've been working from a Photograph to study the shadows, but for some reason I can't make her smile, believe me, I've tried, and I have not achieved a single believable smile. She seems to be not in the mood. 

I have been painting Frida again because I love the story and work of this great Mexican painter.  This time I'm using only primary colors and no ink pens to help me with the eyes or lips, etc. So, it's only acrylic paint with a retardant so I can work the paint more time before it dries, (the shadows have been particularly hard to do!) and lots of color mixing:

This is the first time I've approached a painting like this. I used to think it was too hard to mix my own colors, but I've been reading a lot about color and how the balance between them work, I took a class about this years and years ago when I was starting college, and there I learned about primary, secondary, tertiary, complementary colors, etc. They had us mixing our own color wheel from only primary colors and I was fascinated by this, it truly changed the way I saw color. I wanted to do that again, learn to mix the colors and get the exact shades of them. It's been an interesting experiment.

It's harder than I thought it would be, and this painting still needs a LOT of work, but I am enjoying the outcome and the process. Jafabrit had a good post about how we not always LOVE the paintings that we do, and I couldn't agree more. Every new one is a work in progress. Not to be happy with the last painting I did is what often makes me start another one, they are never truly finished. It's been rare for me to feel completely satisfied and at peace with ANYTHING I've done. I like this hunger for bettering one's self (Is this last sentence grammatically correct???) 

More pictures to come once this painting is finished and framed.