Strachans!

A few days back I made a watercolor of Kara Strachan Bullock, and today when I went seeking a reference photo from which to practice the "Nadyia" technique again, I decided I'd better also do Kara's artist sister, Deanna Strachan Wilson, or there would be shouts of favoritism! No, really I wanted to use her photo because she has almost completely white hair, and I thought it would have a cool unfinished look next to the full-on cross-hatch, pen, watercolor, and acrylic treatment of the face.

I didn't really intend to go so dark with my colors (she's pretty pale), but the brush pens are so intense that I had to bring other things up to match them. Also, I mistakenly picked up a green pen when I was going for a gray, so there are some interesting shades incorporated. But over all, I feel like it worked, and I had fun, once again, using the Nadyia method.

"Deanna SB"—Ohuhu and Arteza pens, watercolor, white acrylic, gel pens, Uniball pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Tachina Take Two

Not exactly Take Two—I didn't paint a do-over, I just spent another half hour slightly altering the angle and placement of the ear (which I discovered was the culprit, rather than the location) to look slightly more like the photo. Of course, in the course of doing that I took another hard look at the reference photo and discovered that the real problem lay in the angle of the entire head, which I didn't quite grasp as I drew it. But, with the ear shift and some additional tweaks of highlights and shadows here and there, I'm happier with her, to the point that I'm willing to post her on Instagram.

Here below is the reference photo, from which you can discern my remark about the tilt of the head/face. Close, but no cigar, as they say.

I still plan to try her again in watercolor, because she deserves a more accurate rendering—but maybe not for a few days!

Texture!

My friend Phoebe is a magician. She makes all these heavily textured backgrounds, and then by some sleight of hand I have not yet fathomed she draws and paints perfectly rendered portraits over them with each highlight and every eyelash placed precisely where she decides they should be, using all sorts of esoteric media, undeterred by the damned bumpy surface! Well, I'm just here to say...Can't do it!

I decided to try today, so I put a big glop of gesso on my paper and spread it around, then roughed it up with an old credit card and let it dry. Then I attempted to make (in charcoal, just like Phoebe does) my base drawing. After I made it about halfway, I gave up, rubbed out most of it, and went back in with pencil.

I tried some watercolor on the surface but found that it beaded up and I couldn't control it, so I switched to acrylic. I made a great big daub of it for a couple of hours, and finally did some fixes with a Stabilo and a gel pen and called it good. It's not good, but I'm done with it!

This, poor woman, is "Tachina." Gesso, pencil, acrylics, Stabilo, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 12x9 inches. Someday soon I will paint her with a big sloppy watercolor brush on some nice smooth paper and do her justice.

LFI 2022 Week 7

Hard to believe we're seven weeks into the new year already! I haven't been doing many of these LFI lessons, because a lot of them have been either in graphite or designed to learn virtually in Procreate or Artrage, neither of which appeals to me. But THIS week was a lesson I could get behind! I did have to splurge and buy some marker pens and brushes to duplicate what the teacher was doing, but the method looked so fun that I didn't mind! (I ended up buying some wrong pens, so I still had to improvise a little, but I managed a fair facsimile of what she was doing.)

The teacher was Nadyia Duff; as usual I decided to paint the teacher instead of the reference photo, and boy did I have big fun. This is a much more illustrative style than I am used to, utilizing a lot of different media, and doing a bunch of hatching and cross-hatching, which I hate in pencil but love in color! There are several layers here—first marker pens, then water-based brush pens, then watercolor and acrylic, and then we came back in and added/replaced some of the hatching that got lost under the other media, wherever we wanted things to pop. Lastly, she does these fun funky backgrounds of one-point perspective line drawing with no color that give her work such a unique look! I didn't do so well with the perspective part, but I love the effect of the full-color figure against the black-and-white background.

I'm putting in process photos, because this really was a long, involved creation.

The drawing:

The first layer of hatching:

The water brushes (I kinda panicked here, it was so dark!):

The last two layers (watercolor/acrylics, and then replacement hatching):

And, the finished piece!

"Nadyia Duff"—Ohuhu color marker pens, Arteza water-based brush pens, watercolor, acrylics, Signo white gel pen, Uniball for the black details, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, 9x12 inches.