Red Head

Still not quite done with this but I suppose it is near enough.  All I have to do is throw on some king of mottled background and voila.

Faces seem to be really hard, and I don't know why.  Scratch that, I do know why.  We all know what faces should look like.  We all know where eyes go, and noses and mouths, ears, etc.  And we also know exactly how they should be positioned on the head.  We see faces every day, and so, if one object that makes up a face isn't quite right, it makes the whole face entirely wrong.  

Well, I got this afce probably as close as any other face I've painted.  I think I got a bit stripey with the dark in the hair, but I needed to do something to it.  With just strands of red, there wasn't enough depth to it.  the stripes really help bring it out.  Well, it is practice.

The Best Subject Matter

Well, I have finally found the perfect subject to paint, and if you cannot tell, it's me!   LOL.  Ok, I was busily pouring through the internetweb looking for a picture to paint, when I thought to myself, "Self, I think I ought to paint myself just to see if I come out with something recognizable.  

I think what I came out with it something that is a little closer to a police sketch than a photograph.  Actually, now that I am looking closer at this, I look more like Data from Star Trek than a real person.   I'm not totally disappointed with it since I can still recognize myself, but I think i need a little more work before I go into the portrait business.

I tried hard to get a lot of subtle color into my face.  I don't know if you can see them all but there are reds, greens, blues, purples, and yellows in my face.  All of these together help to give a lot of texture to my skin.  I wasn't going to put on any background, but I had some leftover paint on my palette and thought I would just use them rather just cleaning them off.





Some of you are going to look at this and tell me I don't quite have the eyes right, or the eyebrows or the mouth or ......  It doesn't matter.  Please don't tell me I didn't make an exact copy of this picture.  I know that.  This is a practice exercise and thats all.

You all might have to get used to seeing some more pictures of me.  Ha ha ha ha ha.

Portrait

Ok, so, the art site to which I subscribe holds monthly competitions.  This months topic is portraits.  I've never really done portraits, and as such wanted to give this a go.  I did a quick search for portraits on google and a portrait similar to this popped up.  I hope I did it justice.  There are a few things I really like about it.  One is, I think the shading on the shirt is great.  with just a few strokes of color, it totally looks like there is a collar on the shirt and a few button holes.

The nose was intersting to do.  I didn't really draw a nose, just figured if I shaded everything but the nose, it would have to stand out and look like a nose.  I'm not about to say I nailed it, but I think I had a great first effort.  What do you all think, leave a comment.  Thanks, and as always, enjoy.

Guy With Guitar (perspective)

Today we are going a completely different direction from tomatoes.  This is obviously a guy playing guitar, but I wanted to work on both drawing hands and on perspective.  When I stumbled upon this picture, I couldn't resist.

I really wish that the picture wasn't all blue and grey.  maybe I should repaint and use a red shirt or something.  Despite the way the left hand looks, I'm really proud of bing able to draw the hands as well as I did.  I think the main problem with the hand is not that it isn't drawn well, bu that the paint looks a little odd.  If you look at the hand again, you will see the fingers are formed well and in proportion.  Its just a little running I got from the pain that makes it look a little odd.

The left shoulder is supposed to be way in front of the right one.  I definately think I got the size of his arms right, but there is something not right about the way it looks.  It looks like this guy is sitting square to the viewer.  Well, I'll just keep at it, and I'll get it some day.

I tried hard to leave extra white in this picture.  I could easily have made his shirt a solid color, and it might have worked out ok.  But leaving the white gives a sense of highlights.

I am toying with the idea of putting guitar strings on this,  what do you think?