Somewhere on Facebook an art teacher commented to explain his Dream Portfolio project. I don’t remember his name to credit him, and I don’t even know if he invented it, but I immediately felt called to do it! I’ve been wanting to expand and stretch as a painter, to find my voice and improve my techniques. Here’s the project outline:

Choose 10 paintings that you love and admire, that you think are the very best in the world. Preferably choose 10 different artists so you have a variety of styles.
Try your best to reproduce each of the 10 paintings. Take your time. Do them more than once if you want to.
(I added this part) Journal about your process—What are you learning? What’s challenging you? How are you growing?
After you’ve finished all 10 reproductions (probably in 6 months to a year), paint your own subject in the style of one of the artists you reproduced.
Do that as much as you want!
Keep finding your artistic voice with your original work.

It may seem counterintuitive to copy other artists’ work to find yourself, but I have faith that this art teacher knows what he’s doing. He said he’s seen hundreds of students do this project and find more of their voices. Plus, the project just sounds like a fantastic challenge and I want to take it on.

I’ve chosen eight of my ten paintings to date—quite the interesting winnowing process in itself—and I’ve now completed my first reproduction. It took four weeks for me to copy this complex painting, Roy De Forest’s “Country Dog Gentlemen,” polymer (acrylic) on canvas, housed at SF MOMA. I had seen this painting in person in 1995, and it has stuck with me ever since. I had to start with the dogs!

I also used acrylic on canvas, though I wish my proportions had been the same as De Forest’s. His odd proportions (66 3/4 × 97 in) would have required a custom canvas, so I used a 16 x 20 in. canvas that I already had. This discrepancy in proportions led to a few places where my dogs were closer together than his; one dog, the Afghan, didn’t get his full due (part of his hair is off the canvas); and in general, I had less negative space, making for a little busier composition. I wish I had a huge canvas like his, too, because some of the details were hard to create in a small space. I had to use fine brushes with acrylic, not always my favorite since it can be hard to control the plastic paint at times.

De Forest apparently squeezed paint directly from the tube to make his hundreds of textured signature dots on the canvas. I used a paintbrush to make the globs and then flicked them upward to try to get a Hershey’s Kiss shape with a little spike at the top. Sometimes the paint was too wet to make the spike from my Sta-Wet palette so I added gel gloss to thicken it. It was fun and also tedious making all of the “paint pops,” as I call them.

I learned so much about De Forest’s use of color. I mixed so many different shades of colors, using primary colors most of the time. He tended to set complementary colors near each other in the composition, though you wouldn’t think about it when looking at the painting. It’s only something you’d notice while INSIDE the painting, making the copy. He didn’t blend colors on the canvas. Each color stands alone in its opacity, adding to the cartoonish quality of the work.

The dogs themselves are my favorite part of his imagination and the stars of the show. Each one has his or her personality and style. Their crazy eyes are the best part. I feel satisfied with my version of his dogs. They are quite close to capturing the same spirit as De Forest’s dogs. On to my next reproduction—this time a detailed botanical watercolor by a Thai artist I found on Instagram, Kitipong Maksin.

Dream Portfolio Painting #1