Portraiture Challenge for April

So I was lurking on the Portraiture Forum on Wetcanvas, and I could not resist this reference picture that happened to be the one of the portrait challenges for April. So I spent a little time this weekend working on this one. It could definitely use more work, but I really should get back to my Baby J drawings.

Baby J #2 Finished

I've completed the second in the series of 3. I hope to get the next one finished by next weekend because my friend and her baby will be moving back here, and I'd like to get it to her then. So I will hopefully get the next picture sketched out sometime this week and begin laying in color at night after work so that I can give it to her Saturday or Sunday. After a couple of days of not looking at this one, I might go in and make a few tweeks before I put it in the frame. But we'll see.

Baby J WIP...2nd in the Series

I've started on the second drawing of Baby J. Hopefully I can finish this one tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes. She's 5x7, prismacolor pencils on Uart 800 sanded paper.

Baby J WIP Complete....for now....

For now, I am calling her done. I really want to put a background color in, but I don't know what color...and so my instinct is telling me to leave it as is for now. If I decide to do a background, I can always do one later. But for now, we'll leave it, until I get the other 2 in the series done, and see how it all looks in a frame together.

Baby J WIP #2

I worked a little bit more on Baby J today. There was something off about it, but I couldn't see just what it was, so I pulled it into photoshop and layed it over the original reference picture. The red lines are how off I was from the reference. Tomorrow I will fix it, and possibly finish it.

Baby J Portrait

So I've started my next portrait. This is #1 in a series of three. I had wanted to draw my best friend's baby for Christmas, but I did not have the time. Now that the holidays and the wedding are all behind me, I will get it done and give it to her late. I bought a long frame that has a mat cut with three 5x7 openings. I plan to draw 3 different reference pictures of this baby and put them in the frame for her.

After that, I have yet another picture of this baby that I want to draw larger than 5x7.

This is 5x7, Prismacolor colored pencils on Uart 800 sanded pastel paper. I should be able to work on it some more and possibly finish this weekend. Will post an update as soon as I have one. :)

I completed Claire's portrait a few days ago. Or at least, think I did. I'm still waiting for her to reply to my email to let me know if she likes it. At this point, it is possible to make changes. I have not blended with the stencil brush, and it is fairly easy to lift color with sticky tack.

While I wait for Claire to respond, I have been going through my reference photos for my next project. But there are too many pictures that I want to draw...and I can't decide where to start.

So that is where I am now. The wedding and honeymoon are over, and I promise to more actively post to this blog. So I am hoping to have something to post tomorrow. Until then... :)

Portrait Swap - Fresh Start

I restarted my portrait of Claire, so here is an update. My picture was taken at a bad angle, I should have put it on the easle and took a straighter shot. But it's not the final, so I guess it's not that big a deal.

I find that I am actually afraid to touch it with the stencil brush, because my last attempt at her portrait was not fixable because of the blending. If I don't blend this one, then I can't possibly ruin it. I do see some changes that I want to make to it. And considering I can easily lift color with sticky tack, that shouldn't be a huge problem.

Trying to decide if I want to do the paisley design on her shirt, or just make it solid blue. Also not sure if I want to go lighter on the background or not.

So far, I'm pretty happy with how this one is coming along. I do wish I had more daylight hours to work with. I am going to try to bring it to work with me tomorrow to work on it during lunch. I will try to get a better picture of it for the next update.

Portrait Swap Disaster!

When I started this blog, I said you'd see my failures as well as my successes...so, as promised, here is a portrait that I messed up on.


The photograph actually looks better than the real thing. Here's my excuse for messing it up. If you take a look at my website, you will see that I am used to brightly lit subjects. Shadows are not something I have that much experience with. Shadows are hard to get sometimes, without making the colors look muddy. So what I've succeeded in here, is making my subject look like a battered woman. I'm sorry, Claire!

I had to put Claire on the back burner for a few weeks while I took care of some wedding planning, and holiday stuff. But now I'm back to complete her portrait. I tried to lift the color off of this portrait, and it doesn't seem to want to come up. That's because I blended it pretty good with a stencil brush. I could probably get it all off, if I wanted to make Claire wait a year or two! lol.

Claire went ahead and sent me some new photos of herself, without shadows, incase I wanted to try a new picture when I start over. I'm taking her up on that, ONLY BECAUSE, I'm still so busy with wedding planning, and I don't want to make her wait much longer while I fiddle with a new skill. I'll work on the shadow challenge another time. Maybe re-read Ann Kullberg's Colored Pencil Portraits again before I make a go of it. For now, I will stick with a reference that she sent without shadows, so that I can get it done in a timely manner and ship it to her asap.

In the next couple of days, I will post my start on the second attempt at Claire's portrait. And eventually, probably after my wedding, I will revisit the original reference with shadow and see if I can do better.

In fact, improving my art, and blogging more often are goals for 2010. So off I go, and I wish you all a very happy, creative and productive 2010!