May Eye Have a Cup Of Tea

Well, now that it is summer and things have slowed a bit, I can spend a bit more time painting.  I'm not spending a ton more time, but just enough to be able to pump a few paintings out a week.  A while ago, I got interested in drawing and painting portraits.  Most of them were horrible, and should never see the light of day.  Since I had a few that were unmentionable,  I thought it a good idea to learn how to paint eyes, mouths, noses, ears, basically all the components of the face in hopes of bieng able to put them together into a cohesive picture.  Well, I didn't really follow through in earnest with that.  I did, however, continue to draw eyes.  Here is one I did in a few spare minutes today.  Yes, I will admit to being influenced by some videos that I have seen on line recently.  (Maybe I shouldn't watch any videos on line.?)  Below is the the same eye, but before I finished it off.

Here is the first iteration of the eye.  It is a little flatter, and a little blander.  Somehow the eye really does seem to pop out more in the finished one.  Who'd've guessed?

Also, I was able to do a little extra doodling this morning.  I painted my tea cup.  It's not a traditional tea cup by any sense, rather its a man's tea cup.  It's hand made pottery.  And truth be told, its a travel coffee cup.  But in my little world, never shall coffee be introduced to your coffee cup for fear of adverse flavors in your tea.  So, this one has been my tea cup for years.

Hope you enjoy these quick pics.  Thank you.

Eye Can See Clearly Now, The Rain Has Gone

Still doodling, and sketching.  Really trying to get better at painting people, so I am working on different body parts.  here are a few eyes.  I didn't have a reference photo while I was sketching, nor did I have a mirror, so the eyes are just kind of a made up assortment of parts.

It's really funny to think that sitting on my couch with a football game on, I can paint something that actually looks like what it is supposed to be.

Once again, I am just using regular paper.  I think the type of watercolor paper I have been using, in the climate I live in, is not really the best paper for the way I want to work.  Using this normal paper allows the page to be a little wetter a little longer.  My normal paper would soak up all the water right away and there could be no possibility of blending or mixing of color on the page.

These 3 eyes are watercolor and pencil.  I don't know if that is the most effective way to do this, but sitting on my couch, it seemed to work.  Looking back, i think I should have spaced them out just a bit and put on some eyebrows.  Well, maybe tonight.  Enjoy

Eye Study

Just  a quick study of eyes.  A few weeks ago they seemed so hard to draw.  Like many people, I used to think they were almond shaped with a round thing in the middle.  Then throw in a black dot and you have an eye.

Well guess what, I've learned a huge amount about eyes.  They aren't really almond shaped.  The iris is lighter in the middle and darker near the pupil and edge.  The sclera isn't white, or fully white anyway.  You have a lid flap that covers your eye lid, and the whole thing is shadowed by the brow ridge.  Who knew?!  Like i said, a month ago an eye was an almond with whiskers coming off of it.

By no means do i think these few simple drawings make me an expert at eyes, but they have helped to show what eyes really are like.

Expect to see more simple studies like this one.  They really do help you to understand the subject.

Enjoy.

The Eyes Have It

So I learned that eyes aren't just almond shapes.  I also learned that iris' aren't solid colors, the whites of your eyes aren't white, and your lid folds into a slot called and eye fold.  All these together make an eye kind of a tricky thing to paint.

Noses on the other hand have two dark ovals (the actual nostrils, and a rounded point.  The outside of the nostrils get shading to give them definition, even if when you look at someone you don't necessarily see it.

I tried to take what I have learned in the past two weeks and paint a better pair of eyes and a nose.  I think I am making definite progress.

Why the big push for learning eyes?  Well, since I've been trying to paint faces, I've learned that if the eyes look good, the painting looks good.  If the eyes look bad, the painting looks bad.  So, if I learn to paint eyes, regardless of what I do with the rest of the painting, the painting will look good.  (at least thats the theory)

Oh, the base for these eyes are green because I was painting a different picture and already had green on my palette and didn't feel the need to mix new.  Enjoy.