I also loved the model he used; but I always dislike ending up with a painting of the same person everyone else painted, so even though I did like the reference photo, I went looking and found one of my own. The exercise was to paint more than just a face; the hands included in his reference were much more complex than these, so I cheated a little, only having to paint the backs of the hands with the fingers folded under. But I feel like I made up for it a bit by incorporating her beautiful wild hair, which wasn't easy to mimic!
Here are some process pix—my pencil sketch, and the first layer using only Raw Sienna:
I was sorry, after I'd done it, that I didn't stick with the monochromatic shades of brown and gold for the entire picture. The model was wearing a really pale peachy-pink sweatshirt, and the shadows looked turquoise in the light, so I did that, but it stuck out too much in contrast with the sienna, umber, and flame orange I used for the face and hands, hair and background. I ended up going over it with a thin layer of raw sienna, which knocked everything back a bit. I should have left it there; instead I decided to do another layer in purple, which had the unexpected effect of bringing the pink back out. Oh, well. I wish I'd just left it pale yellow or something in the first place.
This was challenging, and also larger than I usually work (12x16 instead of 9x12), so it took me quite a while—I started at 6:30 a.m. and didn't finish until 11:30 (although I took a 30-minute breakfast break in there). But I'm happy to get back to painting after somehow not finding the time this past week, despite not feeling like I accomplished much else!
"Aaliyah"—Pencil and Daler Rowney inks on 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, approx. 12x16 inches.
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