Saturday, November 22, 2014

Anson Mount?

I find IMDB a good source of photos to practice portrait drawing.  Here is a portrait of Anson Mount, star of Hell on Wheels.  I struggled a bit with the placement of features and later realized I got the angle of the left side of his face off which tended to elongate the right side of his face and make his right eye appear too high.  Well, that is why we keep practicing.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Tina underpainting

I signed up for 5 open studio sessions at BACAA to work on a long pose painting.  Below is the under painting after 2 sessions.  Unfortunately, I'll have to miss one session and therefore only have 2 sessions left to finish the painting.  Wish me luck.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

After Rubens portrait underpainting

The old Masters often used an underpainting to lock in shapes and values.  One method is called a wipeout where you draw contours and and shadow shapes onto the canvas, then apply a thin layer of raw umber or burnt umber.  Using cloth from an old t-shirt you wipe out the lightest values first and then the other light and mid-tones.  You can add back in darks that got wiped out using a brush.  Below is a quick study I did after a portrait by Rubens.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Hands

Drawing and painting hands can be challenging but the expression of a hand can be extremely powerful.  They can say so many different things with a simple change in position.  They can show us the way, excitement, anger, frustration, openness, and when joined with another's hand love and friendship.  On the Figure Drawing and Gesture website you can find lots of pictures of hands to practice your drawing.  Here is my attempt at drawing and painting a hand that to me is expressing a point of view.