portrait

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

More Portrait Practice in Acrylics.. After Hashim Akib

| cathmary1030

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.

Portrait Practice — Painting the Asaro (Variant) Head

| cathmary1030

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.

Woman in Head Scarf… my first portrait

| cathmary1030

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.