Back in 2006 I decided that I would put my painting skills to the test and try to paint a very large (24" x 30") portrait of Audrey Hepburn as a present for someone dear to me who thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful icon. I also decided, because of my love of black and white photography, that I would do this using only black and white acrylic paint. It turned out well, but I saw that I had a lot of room for improvement. Since then I had wanted to explore how to get better texture and light illusion using only black and white acrylic, but I didn't get another chance to put brush to canvas until late this past year. That's when I started the next piece of the series, James Dean. Finally, to complete the series I created a portrait of Marilyn Monroe.
To me, this series shows my progress as an artist, each piece showing improvement over the previous. There is also something fantastic about being restricted to the use of black and white. It really allowed me to focus on how light and dark interact to bring an image to life.
Enjoy!
