Portraits – Pencil, Watercolour Tone & Colour

So last week all my art classes were on the topic of portraits.

On Monday at The Seasons Art Class  we studied 'Figure Drawing, the construction of a body and face’. My body drawing didn’t come out as well as my face drawing. The exercise was to draw the head shape then shade it in with pencil; then draw in the eyes and use measurements to place the nose, mouth and chin. After the final step of drawing the ears and hair, I decided my face looked like Jude Law.

On Wednesday in Wendy’s  class we painted a portrait in watercolour. I always have trouble painting in watercolour, so I painted the same subject the tutor demonstrated in class. It was a good result but wasn’t as easy as Wendy makes it seem.

On Thursday in Karen’s class we did a tonal study of a person that Karen photographed. My watercolour, of course, didn’t come out half as well as Karen’s. I was happy with it, except for the eyes, which I didn’t manage to capture properly…mainly because they were in shadow.

‘3xWeekly’ Cherie’s Sleeping Labrador

This week as usual, I was falling behind on my 3xWeekly pet portraits. Wanting everything to be perfect is a dangerous thing, especially when you’re learning. Anyway, with a shopping addiction and the constant barrage of e-mail from art supply shops, I bought more System 3 Heavy Body Acrylics. With the paint came a free CD from my current favourite artist Hashim Akib. ‘Lay It On Thick Spread It On Thin’ was the perfect inspiration for this painting of my friend Cherie’s Labrador. I spotted the dog's photo a while ago and thought it would make a nice painting; after watching Hashim paint the goldfish it all came together.

‘3xWeekly’ Looking for inspiration

Started painting earlier in the week so hopefully it'll be smooth sailing. Instead of using my own photos I searched for a Westie image on PMP and found a great photo. Made a good start but didn't finish the painting till Wednesday.

For my second and larger painting (A3), my pet Samoyed Princess was perfect, because the dog is white and I was inspired to use methods from 'Vibrant Acrylics'. Rather than draw the dog by hand, I decided to trace the photo to make things go faster... so buying an A3 printer seemed logical :)). Using colours that Asam Ahib used in his tree painting; the portrait of Princess took only 2 days. After the first day I was in love with it; after the second... and some more fiddling, even more so.

For my third portrait I found another reference photo on PMP of a beautiful cat, 'Spooky' ; if you want to follow the link you must join PMP.  This cat proved to be a little difficult, but the end result was unique. The painting could have been more refined, but because it took over 5 days,
 I had to stop working on it. In this photo, the edges were cropped to make the painting look better.  There is a pattern beginning to form here…I can’t even do '3xWeekly' never mind daily. Don’t know why some paintings are easy and others very difficult. Hopefully I will begin to improve and start painting faster.

To get to 100 pet portraits I need more inspiration and many more dog or cat photos. If you would like a non professional painting of your pet, please send me photos. Preferably of the animal looking at the camera... sorry, I know it's hard to get those photos. Don't expect anything too great; they will not be photo realistic because that's not my style. Most will be on A4 paper and some on A3.  You can e-mail me an electronic copy at amsonart@gmail.com... I’ll post my painting on this blog and if you like it and live in the UK, I will mail it to you.

Drawing & Painting Class – Tone and Edges w/ Joel

In Joel’s next drawing & painting class we worked on tone and mark making techniques. Starting with the same exercise from last trimester's class, we then chose a type of mark and used it to draw a rose from a photo. The decision on the mark type was made before we were told what we were drawing. Of course, I chose a difficult circular motion... as you can imagine my drawing didn’t go well. 

Didn’t finish the rose but instead started to draw the bust of a woman… this portraiture stuff might be for me. Creativity can be fickle, a few weeks of torture and then voila.

In the following class we were to concentrate on edges. Joel likes to paint people so there were mainly street scenes in his photographs. I really liked my choice and later found out that Joel painted the same photo in colour.   Don’t know if it’s the charcoal and erasing technique or the subject matter, but I loved this exercise.

It would be ironic if I wind up drawing people as an artist; when taking photographs, I’m always waiting for folks to move out of the way.