Saturday, March 2, 2013

She Girls: First Attempts

I thought we would take a break from backgrounds (that's all I've shown this week!) and take a look at my first two painted faces. The first I completed on uncoated watercolour paper, which tended to soak up the paint and make things a little blotchy. Still, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out:
Her cheeks are a bit much for me, but I was trying to get them just right and using my fingers, so I ended up making them too big. Still, I'm quite satisfied with how things turned out. The flowers I made with leftover paint make me smile - I'll have to add them into this girls hair when I cut them out and paste them onto a background (I can't waste her, even with her apple cheeks... I can probably tone those down anyway).

paints used: titanium white, titan buff, Indian yellow hue, red oxide, quinacridone magenta, sap green

Friday evening, I went to Curry's to pick up a few more colours to use for skin tones. I grabbed burnt sienna, raw sienna and burnt umber light (all Golden). They are nice warm tones that will be great for making more ethnic girls. Still, I wanted to stick to the familiar - a caucasian girl - for my first canvas.

I'll show you a bit more of my process, including the inspiration photo and sketch, later, but for now here is a face with a slightly wider palette (I wish I had taken a photo before painting on the hair but I was on a roll and my fingers were dirty):
After taking these photos, I decided she needed a bit more shading on the side of her cheek facing downward.
This time I used a paintbrush more than my fingers (my favourite 1/2" filbert) and am really pleased with the skin tones I achieved. I just have to work on the shadows a bit before I'm completely satisfied. She's progressed quite a bit from here now and I'm getting really excited about her. Anyway, more later! I need to think about cleaning up a bit before painting some more!

paints used: titanium white, titan buff, Indian yellow hue, raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber light, red oxide, quinacridone magenta, permanent red violet, sap green (plus mars black in her hair)

1 comment:

Angie said...

It's very nice to see that you've taken what you're learning in the class, but completely developing your own style with it :)