Lets Face It

Let’s Face It 2026 — Week 4

| cathmary1030

I did this portrait in acrylic on an 8×8 canvas panel as a part of the 4th weekly exercise of Let’s Face It 2026. It was taught by Laurie Johnson. I modified the reference photo in Adobe’s Photo Essentials, using the “Cutout” feature (set at 4) to make the skin shading lines. (Now I need to blend better!) I am thinking of redoing the whole thing. We’ll see. (In the meantime, she looks better in miniature.)

Let’s Face It 2025 — Week 1

| cathmary1030

A year ago I signed up for Let’s Face It 2025, a 52-week series of portrait lessons which you can either follow along with or use as inspiration for your own fully original art, but I never did a single exercise. This was Week One and it was taught by Kara Bullock.

I have yet to complete any of the years I bought (2023 through 2025) although I just signed up for the 2026 version, but there are actually only a few weeks in each of the years which interest me, and they’re on my to-do list.

This one was done on an 8×10 canvas toned in quinacridone rose (PV 19), and I don’t have the photo credit information, but am guessing it’s on Unsplash or Pixabay. “In progress” photos are below. I used a lot of Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Titanium White, and a crimson color (PR 264).

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.

Let’s Face It 2018 — Week 43

| cathmary1030

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.