I've been keeping rather busy with the art making, going to Dorian's on saturdays pretty consistently. It feels really nice. Here is some updating for some of the stuff I've been working on. There's a couple bigger things being painted, but I'll post those when I'm done. In the mean time...
First two drawings are from my Chiaroscuro class. The portrait of the old lady, who's name I do not know, and the still-life were done in pan-pastel, 8B Staedtler pencil, Wolff Carbon pencils, and white chalk.
The next 8 drawings were from the last two weeks of Dorian's open studio sessions. They're a mix of 5 minutes through 20 minutes. I'll list them in order.
5 minute, blue pencil and white colored pencil
20 minute, pen and white colored pencil
20 minute, pen and white colored pencil
5 minutes, Prismacolor pencils
10 minute, Prismacolors
10 minute Prismacolors
20 minute Prismacolors
20 minute Prismacolors
I had quite a bit of fun developing the drawings strictly with color. My ultimate goal was never to get a straight likeness, but just to break out of my comfort zone and make good drawings. I think I'm slowly getting better at stylizing the expressions and the gestures, forcing myself to think about the outcome and less about making a portrait. These are all drawings of the same model, Fatima, and while they are not 100% faithful (far from it in fact) I think I successfully imbued a bit of Fatima into each drawing. The long pose one is still being finish. I just need to draw her feet and punch up some of the values. I'm going to be daring and put a little bit of transparent oils over the finished drawing to spruce up some color accents and see what happens. The outcome may be disastrous, but oh well.
These next two consist of a small experiment I'm currently working on and an almost finished small portrait of a good friend of mine, Marian.
This one is based on a 2 minute gesture I did at Dorian's. I wanted to transfer the pose into somewhat of a finished piece because I really just loved it too much to leave it as a quick sketch. I was able to take some reference photos, but I managed to just use my 2 minute sketch to draw this out only relying on my photo reference for the anatomy and striped pattern. This is about 4 hours of painting (while watching FireFly)
This one is an unfinished portrait of my friend. I was dabbling with a bit of tight rendering and a bit of loose handling. Interesting result, but still have a ways to go.
