I’ve been away from drawing and painting for a few weeks now… must be the summer heat. Finally picked up my Aquarelle pencils and sketch book to do this quickie face.
Quickie Sketch: A Face
Portraits
Toddler in Graphite and Charcoal
This sketch was done from a reference photo of my own.
Portrait in Blue: from Adventures in Acrylic
This is another work from Marla Baggetta’s Adventures in Acrylic class I’m taking. I have to say I’m NOT a big fan of phthalo blue, at least as a background. Especially a portrait background! That blue just shines through in an aggravating fashion! And, obviously, it affects the look of the other paint colors used. All in all, she looks greener than I had wanted her to be. Until I get portraits down well, I don’t see the purpose of using wacky colors. 🙂
Anyway, painting a portrait — though this was supposed to be “expressive” and “fun” not an absolute likeness — is one thing, drawing is another. I fiddled with the proportional divider I bought for sketching, and the drawing was pretty decent. But once I started painting over my pencil lines, the drawing went out the window. Ugh!
I AM reasonably satisfied with the facial planes and the shadows — for a first attempt.
Oh well. Tomorrow’s another day!
Work-in-Progress: Copying Sargent
One of the posts on the Paint Coach Patreon page is a portrait-painting tutorial using the portrait of Henry James painted by John Singer Sargent in 1913. The tutorial walks beginning painters through the process of painting the big shapes first, and gradually moving towards smaller and smaller shapes (i.e., more detail).
Chris Fornataro (aka Paint Coach) gives the highlights of that process in a recently posted video on YouTube. A copy of Sargent’s work is on the left; a screen shot from the YouTube video is on the right.
I am not yet finished with my own attempt at copying Sargent, but decided to post my work in progress.
Notans — Based on Pixabay & Unsplash
I downloaded a few photos of women’s faces from Pixabay and Unsplash, set them to grayscale, applied the gaussian blur filter, and then posterized the image down to 2 values: black and white.
I used these notans to paint.
The top-most picture was done on wood covered with gesso painted with an old brush (hence, the ridges.) Some folks say to sand your gesso application, but I didn’t want to hassle with that. Below is a comparison between the actual notan (posterized photo) on the computer screen, and my painted image on the right. Close but not exact.
Pencil Sketch from Pixabay
Charcoal Like Mad: Lesson 1
Lesson 1 of Charcoal Like Mad (by Kara Bullock) was to draw a portrait on cardboard (!) using the reference photo provided, and compressed charcoal (black and white), and charcoal pencils (black and white).
I only had corrugated cardboard available so I used that. Not crazy about the ridges, but hey, it was just play! This was fun — but I pressed too hard on the nose and busted a hole in the cardboard!
Warm-Up Portrait: 2nd Version
The main difference between this portrait and the one I posted a few days ago — besides the color of the paper and the lack of sticker residue — is that rather than using the white “charcoal” pencil, I used the eraser to lift the color for the highlights in the eyes, and the earring.
The image is from Anastasia Gepp on Pixabay.
A Warm-Up Portrait in Charcoal
It’s been some time since I’ve posted to this blog, but I’ve been doing a fair amount of sketching by copying from illustrations in childhood favorite books, and from some of the example drawings in art instruction books by Barrington Barber. Something best kept in a sketchbook and not posted to social media.
Of course, like every other beginning artist who does some copying, I eventually got bored! So, now I’m back to charcoal (from graphite) and starting to work on more portraits. With the portrait below, I used charcoal pencils, willow sticks, compressed sticks, and white “charcoal”. I’m about to start taking the learn-at-your-own-pace online course Charcoal Like Mad taught by Kara Bullock.
That ugly outline of a rectangle crossing the eyebrow and nose on the image is actually from the gummy tag identifying the color of this Canson Mi-Teintes paper (cinnamon). Ugh! But the paper has sat in my closet for about 2 years now, and the closet is the warmest room in the house in summer, coldest in winter. Time to use the stuff up.
In the meantime, this is just a warm-up to get back in the flow, and playing with charcoal.
My work is based on a Pixabay image by Anastasia Gepp.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 