Lesson fail

I have been looking forward to painting this guy for weeks—partly, I must admit, because his was the last picture of the 30 days of Sktchy portraits, but mostly because he has such an interesting face, expression, hair. So why I didn't follow the lesson is beyond me, except that I always feel the need to do something a little differently. Most times that works out, but sometimes it just implodes, as it did today.

The lesson, ironically, was to know when to stop when making a portrait. The instructor decided to focus on the face—the eyes in particular, and his general expression of slight anxiety—and then left everything else—the dreads, the facial hair—to simple squiggly pen lines, so that the face would really pop.

I decided I didn't want to be a copycat, so instead of working in ink, I drew him in pencil and decided to paint the whole thing—and boy did I. My biggest mistake, which I realized way too late, was introducing a stark black for the pupils of the eyes and for the whiskers. After doing everything else in shades of Sienna, Shadow Violet, Naples Yellow, and Ultramarine, I should have stuck with that soft palette. The black just overwhelmed everything, and stuck out like a sore thumb.

Once I realized that, I decided I couldn't paint the dreads black as well, so I did them in Shadow Violet. Nope. They weren't strong enough to fight with the black or to stand out against the face. I changed half of them over to Sienna. Nope again. Another bad choice.

At that point, I decided to stop. I started writing this, and let the paint dry. Then I thought, What have I got to lose? So I took my pen and went back in with a squiggly line on the dreads and the whiskers and put a few lines here and there to accentuate parts of the face a little more.

The black line everywhere at least cancelled out the problem with the contrast between the soft colors and the stark black, but the entire portrait is still woefully overworked. I'm posting it anyway, as a lesson to myself to be more discriminating and to think a few steps ahead. I'm going to try him again in a few days when I'm not feeling so frustrated with this version. I still think it will be a cool painting, if I can get it right.

This is Jujitsu master Ras.

#30faces30days
Sktchy portraits—"Ras"
Pencil and watercolor in Bee sketchbook