Playing with effects

This week's Let's Face It 2022 lesson was with Angela Kennedy, who always likes to do fun backgrounds and effects. For her reference, she picked two old-fashioned ladies in fancy dresses with "quirky" hairdos, and I liked them well enough; but I decided instead to do a couple of girls from the working class, also with interesting (but different) hair and clothes, and I changed the color scheme from cool to warm, since they were leaning up against a brick wall.

First thing we did was draw our figures onto watercolor paper. Then we applied a very wet layer of watercolor (hers was blue and green, mine was orange and purple), and while it was still wet, we sprinkled the whole thing with table salt—which, if you catch it just right, makes lovely blooms in the paint. Mine were not nearly as bloom-y as hers or those of some others who did the lesson, but I have only done this once or twice before and not in years, so I settled for it.

After this was dry (which was an interminable wait!), we removed the salt, then painted the faces and any other skin that was showing with a couple of thin layers of white gesso to get rid of the bloom effect there and create a ground for detail. Then we outlined the figures with pen (she used Micron, I used Uniball), and when that was dry, we began to paint in the details.

It was a challenge to paint shadows yet still let the pretty dappled background show through as much as possible, but I think I did okay with that, at least on the clothes. I did choose to go with a dramatic dark for the alleyway that receded behind the block wall against which they were posed, and I put in some vague indication of the block shapes in the background—maybe too many, it distracts a little from the figures—and added the one girl's shadow.

The last part was to put the details into the face, which was the most challenging part, since the faces are only about 1.5 inches across and my tiniest brush (except for my rigger) is a #8! But I managed to produce some specific features, and am fairly pleased with my results.

I think these girls were some kind of factory workers. I thank them for leaving a nice pose for me to discover.

"Working Class Friends"—pencil, pen, salt, watercolors, gesso, Uniball, and gel pen on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.