The Blues
More painting recently. There are things to improve, but the blue bounce light in the hair isn’t one of the things I mean to change. I think that part works.
The Slightest Inking
I’ve been experimenting with watercolor and ink recently.
Here’s one from a few weeks back…
And one from today..
The left sides of both images are a bit blurry because I didn’t keep things flat enough when I scanned ‘em. Oops.
One in Vermillion
Decided to get back to painting today. This was my first attempt to use a traditional limited portrait palette of Vermillion, Yellow Ochre, Black and White. I even had to run out and pick up some Vermillion before giving it a go.
Don’t really know what I’m doing with these colors, yet, but it’s promising. I’ll probably try to finish the portrait staying in this palette (with maybe an accent or two with outside colors).
4B or Not 4B, Part B
More sketches… Several of these are actually from a while back.
Just having some fun…
Woman at a coffee shop. One of the better likenesses of the bunch…
Life drawing…
Interesting character I saw. Drawn later from memory.
My favorite of my recent sketches, I think.
Wish this one wasn’t so silver…
4B or Not 4B
Took a break from painting for some pencil sketches recently. One unfortunate discovery: all the 4B and 6B lead I have ends up being silvery and shiny on brown paper. Looks like I’ll be sticking with 8B and charcoal instead.
8B pencil, plus charcoal…
4B pencil, white pencil…
8B pencil, white crayon…
4B pencil, charcoal. It’s not quite this bad in person, depending on how the light catches it. Scanning it in, the light from the scanner brings out all the worst qualities of the 4B lead.
8B pencil. A quick caricature…
Sepia pencil… I don’t think it quite reads, this was a pretty funny moment: laptop neglected for a little texting; an actual book languishing on the far side of the table.
4B pencil, 8B pencil, maybe some charcoal…
Here’s that same image, with the shininess (sloppily) removed via some photoshop magic. This is a little closer to how it looks in person unless the light catches it wrong. If that happens it looks as bad as it does above.
48 + 8B + white pencil…
8B pencil…
8B, but insufficient commitment on my part…
8B, white crayon…
More to come…
A Pair with Glasses
Glasses always add an interesting dimension to a portrait. Besides serving as an additional feature to express personality and mood, they also draw attention to errors in perspective or anatomy.
That makes these extra fun.
Here’s one I’ve been working and reworking for quite a while now. My big focus tonight was getting the lighting and skin tones right. The previous session was under orange-ish light, which threw off some of my hue choices. There are still a few big things to fix, but I think I understand what needs to be done. Finally.
Here’s the sketch for the next painting. I ruined the likeness on the mouth trying to tweak the expression. These things evolve a bit when the painting starts anyway, so I’ll wait to correct it until later.
I may add a second figure to the left side of the painting (which is larger than the bit I scanned).
Impatient Zero
Session #5 on this one. Rather than arranging for another sitting and doing this properly, I decided to wing it again, adjusting things that looked wrong to me and smoothing things out.
Still plenty to do on this one. Hopefully I’ll tackle it again next week.
Smooth Move
Back to painting for a bit today. There were a few last placement issues I wanted to address before the next sitting with the model, but I also found myself smoothing out a lot of the color and lighting.
I probably should have waited longer to do this, but the painting looked so crude and rough that I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ll regret this a little bit when I try to go back and correct the likeness later.
