This is the finish of the older, bearded man portrait from the follow-along/demo portrait in Hashim Akib’s book Painting Portraits in Acrylic. I chose to paint his shirt as a sap green instead of the pyrrole red the teacher uses. Because I painted green over red, it looks almost black.
The shadows around his nose and lips are too purple; I need to lighten those.
I’m continuing to work on follow-along/demo portraits from Hashim Akib’s book Painting Portraits in Acrylic. Today I started work on a portrait of an older, bearded man.
As with the work done in this earlier post, I did another follow-along/demo portrait from Hashim Akib’s book Painting Portraits in Acrylic. I bought some student-grade acrylics (Amsterdam brand) since this is merely practice. The background was toned in a Quinacridone Rose (PV 19) as directed, but I drew out the figure using willow charcoal. As for the skin colors, again I followed along mostly: the primary skin colors are burnt sienna, orange (PO 73) and yellow ochre (PY 42).
I painted the folds on the scarf using a palette knife; I did not go back and add touches of a pinkish yellow white representing sparkles reflecting the light on the scarf. Maybe later.
Her lips should be pinker and darker; the top of the scarf away from her head should be darker and bluer.
My last few works — a portrait and a “portrait” of the Asaro head — have been in the cartoon realm, so I’m skipping posting those for now!
Instead, I found a video on YouTube that walks you through drawing the “Loomis Head” and converting it (for lack of a better term) to a planar head (what the artist calls the “memorized Asaro head”). After watching that, I drew the planar head on my 8×10 canvas with willow charcoal.
What I discovered in my failed attempt at painting the Asaro head is that the color Ivory Black is fairly transparent, and doesn’t cover well. I ended up going to Michael’s and bought some Mars Black from Liquitex Basics. It’s student grade compared to the artist grade Ivory Black, but wow, what a difference!
Anyway, here’s the Asaro head done; sage green for the background.
Below is a copy of the reference photo I used to paint, as well as a close-up of my value changes. In some cases like the upper lip, the value change is too abrupt, while in other cases there’s not enough of a value change. I’ll have to keep practicing.
Back in February, I bought the British artist Hashim Akib’s book Painting Portraits in Acrylic because I liked his portrait style, and because he uses acrylics. Included in the book are 6 exercises, and the first one is in monochrome.
I had earlier toned a 9×12 with a pale blue (ultramarine and white) so I just used that.
Yep, she looks cartoon-like. LOL. But now I’ve gotten my first portrait under my belt. It’s difficult to make soft edges and do blending with acrylics since they dry so fast — I will have to try oils sometime soon.
Again, as with so much that I’m painting these days, this was from an online tutorial by PaintCoach. I tried using Golden Open Acrylics thinking they would work more like oils — that’s how they seem to be advertised — uh, no, didn’t work at all. The light on her face looks more like a crazy mask than seamlessly blended in.
This is my first-ever “portrait”. I did not draw out the head using pencil or charcoal or marker; I just drew “roughly” the so-called Loomis head. This was also an exercise in seeing values.
I will be doing more practice on these heads.
Below is an exercise from PaintCoach’s Patreon page in which you paint from a reference photo of an “Asaro Head“. The idea is to get familiar with the planes of the head, while also serving as a value exercise.
I am not yet finished.
Some time ago I bought the Kindle book Skill-Building for the Beginner Artist: How to Draw the Portrait in Pencil by Jacquelyn Descanso. She does hatching and cross-hatching rather than blending. One of practice exercises early in the book is to copy her graphite portrait of ‘Vanesa”. Below is the result of my drawing of her drawing.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 