portrait

Sktchy – Painting Portraits Class #2 – DONE!

| cathmary1030

The portrait lesson from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy is now complete. If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t use the Opera Rose/Raw Sienna mixture. I’d go with a pale umber or a light yellow ochre. Or even just a plain white canvas! Anyway, I am mostly satisfied with it — the eyes are better than I’ve done before!

I skipped a lot of the blue and the white highlights the teacher used in the online class; the red background of my canvas made it look like she had red highlights in her hair (as opposed to the black tresses the actual model has in the photo reference used.)

#Sktchy #PortraitswithKarl

Sktchy – Painting Portraits Class #2 (WIP)

| cathmary1030

This work-in-progress is again from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy. I am doing this one in acrylic on a 8×10 canvas. The background is a mix of Opera Rose (Winsor & Newton Galeria) which is a garish bubble gum pink and Raw Sienna. The face was drawn on to the painted canvas, and I’ve done the first layer in Burnt Umber (following along).

#Sktchy #PortraitswithKarl

Sktchy – Painting Portraits Class

| cathmary1030

This work is from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy. I’ve finally gotten around to beginning that on-demand class. The idea was to use gouache — which I don’t have — so I used watercolor. I used the 140 lb. cold-pressed paper in my “Visual Journal” (bought months ago and never used until now.) The paper buckled — ugh. Oh well, it was all in fun anyway.

Watercolor and ink. 9×12.  #Sktchy #PortraitswithKarl

Portrait Drawing Practice: Day 1

| cathmary1030

I’m putting aside the paints for the moment to focus on drawing faces (before I try painting them again!). I’ve just signed up for Sktchy’s 30 Faces in 30 Days (which starts in January 2024). I’m also going through the Portrait module of Draw Awesome again for additional practice. Phil Davies of Draw Awesome has some free resources, including “Faces for Artists” which is a curated collection of Unsplash images. One of those Unsplash images is below.

To draw this portrait in graphite, I used a method which Davies calls “modified tracing” where you make small marks to denote the width of the eyes (but not the height), the width of the nose, the width of the mouth, and the width & height of the face. The rest is freehand. I am using 9×12 Kraft paper by Stonehenge.

I have done initial shading, and will need to circle back to shade the hair darker, as well as adding white highlights where appropriate.

Photo by Jassir Jonis on Unsplash