Illustrations

I took a break from portraits this week—first time in a long time—to do a couple of illustrations for a project I have been working on. I'm not going to say what it is yet, because it's a surprise for someone, but I can show the illustrations without anyone being the wiser, so here they are.

The first is this bottle of Jack Daniels with an accompanying shot glass.

I drew this with a Pitt fine-liner pen in sepia, except for the label writing in black, which was put in with my Uniball. Then I watercolored.

I was pleased that I still have the eye to draw something without doing it in pencil first, even though the bottle is the tiniest bit tipsy and also a little narrower than the real thing.

I love doing "product" illustration like this and attempting to make the labeling and text look accurate, even if a bit simplified from what is actually there. I also enjoy trying to mimic the effects of glass, liquid, and reflection.

The second is a drawing of Patrick's Roadhouse, a longstanding tradition for people who live along Pacific Coast Highway near Will Rogers State Beach. This only captures part of its sprawl—there's another, smaller building attached that I didn't even try to fit in—but it gives a good idea of the quirkiness of its character, from its bright shamrock-green paint to the cluster of effigies atop its roof.

The drawing isn't wholly accurate, but I think it's recognizably Patrick's.

On this one, I started with a pencil underlay, because I'm not good at proportional stuff without thinking it through. Often, the angles that are supposed to go upward look to me like they are going downward, and it takes a close and sustained study (and sometimes some actual measuring) for me to see the directionality properly. Don't know why that's so, but it is. Anyway, after the pencil, I inked it with my Uniball and painted it in watercolor.

Both were on my Bee Mixed Media sketchbook paper, which is great for these funky kinds of drawings—it's smooth and fine, and holds up well to watercolor at a weight of 93 lbs.

And now, back to portrait-making...

Week 20

This week's assignment was with Christa Forrest. The objective of the lesson was to capture an unusual angle on a face, which is more difficult, as Christa points out, if you are accustomed to using the traditional method of mapping out a face, like this one, right.

Since I learned to draw portraits using the contour method, I don't find this exercise quite as challenging as someone who relies on proportional tools such as this. I still have to spend some time looking, angling, and sometimes erasing to get it right, but I feel like I have an advantage because I was not taught that way. That's not to say that I don't make mistakes, just that they may be different ones!

This portrait was supposed to be painted "straight" (i.e., natural colors) with a blue-sky-and-clouds background, but since I wasn't painting in acrylics, I decided it would be more fun to do a color study. So I painted the model in four shades of purple watercolor (with a little white gesso for highlights, because I can't find my Titanium white!), and used a bit of Payne's Grey and some Sunflower Yellow for tiny highlights here and there. For her hair, I did an undercoat of shades of brown, but decided it would come together better if I mixed my darkest purple with my Payne's Grey, so I went over all of it with that combo once the first layer dried.

I don't know if the white highlight curls in the hair are too many or too few. I just did a few and stopped when I thought I should. They're not quite as adept as Christa's.

Christa covered up all those beautiful collarbones with tissue collage to give her a blue shirt, but I wanted to try painting them, since getting the shading right is challenging. But I needed to "end" the painting at the bottom somehow, so I took purple's opposite (green) and used some gouache and ink to stencil a leafy frame for her shoulders. The leaves and the highlights in marigold inspired the background, which may be too bright for the subject, but oh well.

I did paint "straight" in one sense: I didn't do any outlining with my Uniball. So all the lines and shadows and highlights were created with paint only. I haven't done that for a while—it felt good!

Here are the reference photo and Christa's painting:

 

And here is my version.

"Breeze"—pencil, gesso, stencil, ink, Paul Jackson watercolors, gel pen,

on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, about 9x11 inches.