Portraits, Days 4 & 5

These were interesting exercises, but I couldn't really relate to the first one, since the expectation was that we would draw and shade in pencil, and I don't do that—haven't since life drawing back in the late '90s. I do enjoy working with either charcoal or conté crayons on toned paper, and would have been happy to do this assignment that way, except that I had no supplies in the house and, now that there's no Continental Art Supply three miles away, no way to get some without an expedition to Blick in Santa Monica.

I therefore did the assignment in paint instead, which kind of defeats the purpose. The idea was to shade in only one direction, instead of cross-hatching. The second part of the assignment was to preserve the highlights and whites around the figure herself, to distinguish her from the background and give her a bit of a glow. So, I painted all in one direction, and saved out my whites. It's not the most impressive thing I've ever done, but I suppose it was good practice. This is Kelly, all in shades of brown.

Today's exercise was much more to my taste, but I blew it by working too large, so I didn't include either the top of her head or her crossed arms below, which would have made it a more powerful portrait.

The lesson was that when you have someone in profile, rather than all of their features (eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin) being on parallel lines running across the face, they are instead on intersecting lines that meet up in a vanishing point in the direction in which the subject is looking. I did manage to make the vanishing point thing work, slanting the eyebrows and eyes up a bit, the nose on the level, the mouth on a slight downward trajectory, and so on; but because I drew the sections of vanishing point too large, my portrait was likewise too big for the page.

It's not a bad portrait, however. I liked that her cheek is so close to matching her rosy background that it almost fades into it. I also used the lesson we learned on Haley, which was to make note of the extreme highlights (light bounce) and save them. The dress was supposed to be white polka dots on the navy, but I didn't have the patience for that today. Another time....

This is Jenell Del Cid. #30Faces30Days

Pencil, watercolor, mixed-media sketchbook.