Our first lesson of the year was to make a meticulously shaded pencil drawing from a reference photo. I watched the first 20 minutes of the demo and thought, I'm not doing this. Mostly it's because I'm not skilled with pencils and shading; I know the admirable (and correct) thing to do would be to go ahead and make the drawing, learning something new and honing my skills in that area—but if I'm never ever going to make finished pencil drawings except as an exercise, then what's the point?
I didn't want to do without a lesson this week, however, just because I didn't like the medium—and I did like the model, and did learn something from the teacher's approach to the subject. So, since it was 6 a.m. and I was already wide awake, I decided instead to paint her. I already had a leftover background from a few days ago, so I used that as my ground and painted the portrait on top of it, a little more opaquely than the last few.
The teacher (Lauren Rudolph, a very talented lady with a pencil!) honed in on the face but left the head scarf, the hands, and the shoulders a lot more sketchy, so I decided to do the same in my painting. I think they still give the effect. Apart from making the eyes a little too large, I feel like I caught the likeness pretty well, and I am happy with the color palette.
I'm calling her "Zahra"—pencil and acrylics on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.
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