More drawing and black paint using an Unsplash photo by Ronny Sison on Unsplash. 8×10 canvas.
Young Lady in Grayscale
Portraits
Unfinished Self-Portrait
I got bored with this, so it’s not finished. Sketched on drawing paper based on a photo from 2013, then transferred on to 300-lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper. (At that point, I’m already bored, ha-ha!) I did a wash of an orange mix with matte medium, and then painted with Mars Black, messing up on the shadows.
Another Grayscale Portrait
This was drawn out and then transferred to an 8×10 canvas, based on a reference photo from a Kara Bullock Art drawing class called “Pushing the Values” taught by Lauren Rudolph.
More Portrait Practice: Grayscale
This portrait is from a black and white reference photo that, unfortunately, I cannot remember where I downloaded it from — possibly from the curated Unsplash photos here. In any case, I actually drew this one out entirely by hand (in willow charcoal). Not sure why I chose a yellow ochre-clear gesso background, but I did.
I’m reasonably satisfied with this one — at least she looks fairly human. I can list at least half a dozen things I would want to do differently next time, but calling this done for now.
Let’s Face It 2024 — Week 4
I did this charcoal work as a part of the 4th weekly exercise of Let’s Face It 2024. It was taught by Jim Bentley. (He does a demo of this face on his Instagram account.) For the class he used Bristol paper — which I believe is fairly smooth — and also carbon powder applied with brushes, none of which I had. I did my charcoal piece with some willow charcoal, compressed charcoal sticks, and blending stumps. And on Strathmore Charcoal paper, tinted green.
Monochrome Portrait
This monochrome work is the painted sketch on 300-lb. watercolor paper which I already posted about. I used Anthraquinone Blue (PB60) aka Indanthrone Blue. It’s semi-transparent, which works well for the technique I was using: treating my acrylics more like watercolors.
The reference photo is by Ehsan Ahmadi on Unsplash.
Another Sketched Portrait
Another online class I signed up for last year that I’m going through now is “Acrylic Portraits, Watercolor Style” at KaraBullockArt.com and taught by Lauren Rudolph. This time I’m not using the class-provided reference photo, but instead the photo is by Ehsan Ahmadi on Unsplash. This image was sketched on 300-lb. watercolor paper, and I’ll be painting it in monochrome, as per the class instruction.
Sketch from “Bringing the Portrait to Life”
One of the many (!) online art classes I’m taking is called “Bringing the Portrait to Life” by Lauren Rudolph via KaraBullockArt.com. This sketch was done on smooth Bristol paper, based on the reference photo provided in the class. Next steps will be to trace the sketch, and then transfer it to a 9×12 canvas, do an underpainting, and then paint the portrait. I won’t be using oil paint, but acrylics — when I get to it, with all my other projects.
Let’s Face It 2018 — Week 43
The portrait comes from the week 43 exercise of Kara Bullock Art‘s Let’s Face It 2018 portrait art experience/class. While I am participating in the 2024 version, and (sort of) participated in the 2023 version, I bought the 2018 set of classes (52 weeks in all) last year. This was one that interested me.
I drew out most of the face last June with pencil, finished it earlier this week with willow charcoal and decided just to get it painted for the practice. (Even though I’m not crazy about parts of my drawing.)
Here’s the completed version, and below I have a set of photos of the in-between phases. (Too often we only see the final work people do, not the messy/ugly intermediate stages. 🙂 )
Here’s the in-progress stages. She looks more than a little sickly, and then I revised all the colors, not following the instructor at all.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 