Drawing

Sketch Awesome.. Portrait from a Loomis Head

| cathmary1030

I have a bad habit of signing up for online classes (Jed Dorsey’s Mini Challenge, Ali Kay’s VIP Fresh Paint class, Sktchy’s 30 Faces in 30 Days, Kara Bullock’s Let’s Face It 2024 (and 2023) and now 2025) and then letting the classes languish. The only good thing is that they’re all “lifetime” (or at least until they go out of biz!)

Anyhow, I suddenly got fired up to draw more portraits, so I went back to Phil Davies’ Sketch Awesome class and looked up week 4 which was about drawing portraits based on the Loomis Method.

Below is the result of doing the head in profile via the Loomis method. I don’t have a credit on the author of the reference photo, which comes with the class.

Let’s Face It 2024 — Week 4

| cathmary1030

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.

Another Sketched Portrait

| cathmary1030

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”

| cathmary1030

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.

3 Faces Ready to Paint

| cathmary1030

I have finished up 3 faces and am ready to paint them. The first one is on an 11×14 canvas, which I toned with burnt sienna, and then drew in part in pencil last June. Finally finished off the drawing part using willow charcoal. The image is from a Let’s Face It 2018 portrait art “class” (more like an online art experience) from KaraBullockArt.

The second one is on a 9×12 canvas, toned with yellow ochre and clear gesso. I drew this on by hand also earlier this month, using willow charcoal. I’m not sure now where the reference image came from.

Lastly, the third face is based on a photograph I took, and traced on to 300-lb. cold-pressed watercolor, and given a wash of acrylic glazing medium, pyrrole red, and cad-free yellow medium.