Portrait of My Brother

Ok, this one needs a little tweeking, but I just wanted to hurry up and post something to show that I am still working! This is another 5x7 portrait, this time on Uart 600. There is something off, that I can't quite put my finger on. I want to say it's the eyes, but when I measured everything using the line technique from Ann Kullberg's book "Colored Pencil Secrets for Success", the eyes lined up correctly with the reference photo. As did everything else. But something IS off. I have a feeling it might have to do with the tilt of the head. In the reference photo, his head is tilted, which is what makes his eyes appear lopsided...but in my drawing, I don't think I quite have the tilt. Over the weekend, when I'm not so tired and have more motivation, I plan to put it into Photoshop and overlay it on top of the reference photo and decrease the opacity to see if I can see where I'm off.

On another subject, my friend that I threw the baby shower for had her baby on September 4th at 6:02pm. She is a beautiful and healthy baby girl. I will definitely be drawing her in the near future. Oh, I just realized darnit, I was holding her at 6:02pm, and I didn't even say Happy Birthday. :( Oh well, she was sleeping anyway. I have to order more Uart paper so that I can start my drawings of her.

I am finding that I prefer the Uart paper. I like the texture...it takes alot of pencil. But, I am still learning. Colors don't exactly turn out like you expect them to on this paper, they turn out a little bit darker. But you can easily correct things by either going over them with another pencil, or by lifting the pigment with sticky tack. The only thing I don't like is the color. I'm finding that I don't like the look of portraits on the tan color of the paper, so I need to add a background color to make the portrait stand out. Eh...maybe I will go back to the Fabriano Tiziano occasionally, just for the colors.

I do want to try a portrait on Ampersand Pastelbord. I know that Nicole Caulfield doesn't like portraits on the pastelbord...but others seem to do fine with it. Might as well give it a try. I do like the pastelbord so far, as I'm working on the Zebrog. Speaking of which, my model for that drawing needs to go out to potty. I will continue to try not to let so much time go by between posts! Goodnight :)