First Face for the First Day for a First Timer

Happy New Year!

And today is indeedy the first day of the year. I had the opportunity to mark this date by doing something special and I want to share this with you.

Last week I was browsing through blogs as I do when I'm trying to avoid doing something else. There on the blog of an artist friend was a long posting about what she wanted to achieve for this year. One of those goals was to begin an ambitious project titled "100 Faces in 100 Days". The idea was to paint a face a day, using the alla prima style (painted all at once, in one sitting), commencing on the first day of the new year. Now this is a fine goal to have but without 100 faces, well, the project would go nowhere.

So before I could have second thoughts, I emailed my friend and presented my offer to be one of her faces and as things worked out, I was the first offer and hence became the "first face".


Here is the artist hard at work. Propped against the wall behind her is a large mirror. I could see a portion of the painting as she was working but try as I did, it does not seem to show up in the photos I took.

This was not an overly arduous thing that I did. I was encouraged to get up and walk about every so often. So here, while I take a stroll, the artist is still working with her oil paints. I must add that I have selected this photo to post because it shows a couple of other works by the artist in the background.


Now just before taking this photo the artist had announced "that's it, I'm about done". So I could again get up and walk around and use my camera. But apparently, after I left, she did spend some more time working at the painting before deciding that it was now done.

If you are really curious about this then why don't you go visit Jill's blog and get the full scoop.
Go here and visit "Life as an Artist - Jill Banks".

The lesson of the day is to try something new this year. You might have thought that sitting and posing for just over four hours would be long and tedious but it was not; although I did try to keep my head still I could talk and chat and move my legs or shoulders around. And every so often Jill wanted me to get up and take a break - it never got to the stage that I said "hey, I need to pause here".

Jill and I will both look forward to hearing your comments about this.