I have attempted something I haven't tried in four years.

I enrolled in an online art school months ago and one of the exercises was to paint a portrait using oil. In the first layer, you'll just use 8 brush strokes and that's it.

Watch the video below to learn more!

I start out with three different kinds of colors and they need to be transparent colors. Then I prepared a sheet of canvas paper to start painting.

I recently discovered a new painting solvent that I loved. It smells like oranges and is safe too. All the supplies are linked in the description of the video.

Here’s the progress of the first layer:

The next day the paint is already dry so I continue working on it. My goal is to get the proportions correct, fingers crossed.

I tried to paint any time I could over the weekend. Because I have a baby it's hard to schedule a time to paint.

Finally, I am done with the portrait!

I'm not really happy with it but I learned a lot from it. It's so hard to keep myself from blending and had struggled with proportion.

I could work on it longer but I just decided to stop and moved on beacasue I learned a lot and that's what matters.

I hope you enjoy this blog!

I'm quite embarrassed to show you the painting but as I always say I want to be open and transparent to you about my progress as an artist and the struggles that I have.

I hope you find it inspiring in some ways!