100 portraits: #32 and #33

Two more portraits in my series of 100 portraits. I still have a long way to go, but I'm getting there. Slowly, very slowly, but I'm enjoying the process of trying out different styles and mediums. And that's the main thing, and what this my challenge is all about - trying out different things, and having fun, and getting lots of practice.

Portrait #32, N., charcoal and white pastel. I don't usually bother much about likeness when using a reference photo, it's more about getting the proportions right, and making it look like a human face. But here I wanted to get the likeness, and I'm happy to say that I did. I think it helps when you draw someone you know, instead of using images from magazines or the internet, as I usually do. Knowing someone's character, the twinkle in his eyes, the smile etc. all these things somehow help to catch the person on paper.

Portrait #33, done in pastels. For this I used a magazine reference again. No likeness to the person, but I like how she turned out. Her name's Miranda King, a headstrong young woman who wants to become an actress, and to conquer the big city's stages with her renderings of literature's heroines. And I think she might well achieve her dream.

100 portraits: #31 - (re-)discovering pastels

I've been trying out pastels for a bit here and there before, but never really quite got into it. But I felt like taking them out again the other day, and spending a bit more time with them, and I'm really beginning to like them a lot. I'm not so fond of all the dust and mess working with them involves, but they seem like a perfect medium to use for a quick, loose colour sketch in the evening, after work, when I'm too tired to get out my paints. And definitely a better alternative than spending all evening in front of the telly.

The chunky bits of pastels also mean that you have to work quite loose. At least if you're not using anything else with them. I gather there are lots of tools and techniques that allows you to work fine details with pastels too, but that's not really what I want at the moment. It's the looseness that appeals to me, having to let go of some of the control, and just adding layer over layer until I'm happy with the result. I definitely want to use them more often, along with charcoals.

So here's portrait #31, done in pastels, a quick evening sketch done in about 20 minutes. This is Katherine Blackmore, a young, intelligent, headstrong woman, living at the beginning of the 20th century, and one of the few women studying at Cambridge university. She's getting top marks in all of her exams, but because she's a woman, she won't receive a proper degree like her male colleagues. But her education will still allow her to pursue an intellectual career, and as a writer and editor, she'll fiercely fight for the rights and independence of women.

100 portraits: #29 and #30

Two more portraits done, and almost a third of my goal of 100 completed. I tried out two very different techniques with these two. For the first I used four or five different pencils, from HB to 6B, and a blending stick, to get the shading very smooth and blended. The second focuses on the shape of the head in the profile, with next to now shading at all. Both were fun to do, and a good exercise to explore different ways of drawing.

Felicity Strong (#29) and Beth Morley (#30).

100 portraits: #24 - #28

Back from a lovely long weekend in sunny (yes, sunny!!) England, I still haven't much more to show than a few more pencil portraits from earlier this month at the moment. I've done a couple of sketches on the way to England last Thursday, which I'll try and post later this week, and I'm looking forward to draw more portraits in my Moleskine sketchbook. But most of all, I'm looking forward to spending more time painting. I went shopping for some beautiful new art supplies (paints, sketchbooks, brushes, paper) while I was in England, and now I'm all ready to finally try out those oils.

Rebecca Olsen (#24) and Anna-Maria Reid (#25)

Mae Smith (#26) Ellen Parsons (#27)

Ulrika Melli (#28)

After a long journey home from the south coast, a very late night, and an early start back into the working week, I'm afraid my brain is too tired to come up with more than just a made-up name for my women.

100 portraits: #19 - #23

I haven't posted much lately, but I've not been idle. Among other things, I've continued with my pencil portraits in my Moleskine journal, and with each drawing, I'm learning. Here are the next five girls and their (imaginary) stories.

Veronika Braunhofer (#19) had a very busy day, and she's taking well deserved rest to calm down and relax. Her whole life has become more and more busy, but slowly, she's learning to refocus, to listen to her inner voice and to make some changes. Ellen North (#20) is a country girl, and her days consist of hard work on the farm from dusk til dawn. Life at the farm isn't easy at the end of the 19th century, and at night, she dreams of a better life - as the wife of the handsome son from the big manor house nearby.

Anna Norén (#21) has just decided to take a break from her studies at university, grab her backpack and go on a trip to across India. There'll be enough time for the 'serious' life, but now it's time for adventure. Maureen Lewis' (#22) has many happy memories from all her travels all over the world. She's certainly seen and done a lot, but now, she's happy to enjoy a more quiet life, and her beautiful garden, filled with blooms from all over the world.

The model for Leonarda (#23) was a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, and as with so many women (and men) of the 15th/16th century, nothing is known about her life at all.

100 portraits: #16 - #18

It's been a long time since I last drew a portrait for my 100 portraits challenge. In fact, it's been over one and a half years. But this year, I'm determined to draw more, sketch more, paint more, create more. So on Sunday morning, I sat down on my desk with a nice cup of Earl Grey, took one of my Moleskine sketchbooks, and starting drawing some portraits.

I used different reference images: a black and white photo from the 1950/60s, a drawing by John Briggs Potter from 1892, and and image of an old wood or copper engraving.

I like to give my portraits invented names and personalities. So here we have Margret Georgia Turner (#16). She's just graduated from school, it's 1960, and she's dreaming of having a career and independence instead of becoming a bored housewife like her mother, who never got the chance to fulfill her own dreams and potential. Karen Nordling (#17) also has dreams and ambitions, but living at the end of the 19th century, her only hope is to find a husband who not only can offer her a good living, but who'll also appreciate her intellect.

Maria Annunciata (#18) had the misfortune of being the youngest daughter of an Italian country squire. The squire has fallen on hard times, and he can't afford the dowries for all his girls, so Maria was put into the nearby convent. The end of her novitiate is close and soon she's expected to take her vows and take the veil for good. But she's a headstrong, ambitious girl, and she doesn't want to spend her life in a convent. In the quiet of the night she is dreaming about and planning her escape.

All I want to do is paint (except the ears, maybe...)

I have been working on getting this post published all week. Started to write it, changed it, deleted it, started again etc. etc. But there are so many thoughts spinning around in my head, that at the end, I can't put into words what I wanted to write about. There are so many things I want to do right now, most of all painting, but I never seem to have enough time, and energy, at the moment.

The weather at the moment isn't helping either. It's cold, cool, warm, humid, oppressive, changing every 5 minutes, and all of that in one day, everyday. And most of all it's raining. Again and again and again. Every single day. And there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

We had a life model again in the drawing classon Tuesday. Well, two, actually. As our model was going to be a bit late, our teacher sat for us at the beginning, so that we could get started. I really enjoy drawing life models. It's such a different experience than drawing from a photo. We were going to paint with acrylics, but 2 hours isn't really enough time for drawing and painting, and I only managed put down a first layer of the background and the dress.

I took it home and I hope to get it finished at the weekend. After having done a couple of life model drawings in the course, this will be the first time that I did a painting from a life model. It feels rather special, somehow.

But why do we have to have ears? They're a pain to draw and paint, and somehow always end up looking wrong. Portraiture would be so much easier if we all just didn't have any ears at all.... ;)

Portrait #13

We didn't do self portraits after all in my drawing class last week (and I was not unhappy about it, to be honest). Instead we worked in pairs, sitting opposite each other, and drawing each other, defining the light areas and the adding more shadows and details. My 'model' was so absorbed in her drawing that she more often than not forgot to look up, but it was still a great exercise. I loved drawing this portrait.

I'm going to miss tonight's class, unfortunately, but I hope I'll get some practising done this week, and I'm looking forward to the next class next week. One of the things I enjoy most about the class is working together with other people. It's so fascinating, and inspiring, to see how seven people, all working with the same techniques and materials, at the same time, come up with seven completely different drawings.

The joys and challenges of life model drawing

I signed up for a portrait and figure drawing evening class at the Volkshochschule (community college) in my city. I really like online classes, they are so convenient, as you can watch the video instructions whenever you want, and follow the lessons in your own pace. But I miss the "critial" part a bit. Sometimes it's helpful to be told where you're going wrong, what could be improved, and how, an experienced teacher pointing out something you've never noticed yourself. And this preferably while you're drawing, and not after you've finished the piece. And of course it's nice to meet some "real" people and have the whole thing in your own language.

The class began last week Tuesday, and after introductions and looking at basic portrait proportion guidelines, we got to draw our first portrait. The teacher had taken her daughter with her, who was going to sit for us as a model. I found it very exciting, but also a bit scary, as I had never drawn from life before!

It certainly is a very different experience. What I found the hardest was the different relationship you have towards your model. I usually use photos from magazines, or other sources, and don't care so much about likeness and such. They're just images, serving me for practising, and my relationship to them is very detached.

But with life drawing, it's entirely different. It's so more personal, even if you don't really know your model personally. I really wanted to produce a good drawing of her, a good likeness, a pretty, nice one. As I progressed with my drawing, I was more and more concerned and dismayed at how stern and severe she looked on my paper. She was a lovely girl, and I somehow felt that this should show in the drawing. That she should look happy and friendly, and smiling, even though she actually wasn't smiling but looking rather serious as she sat for us. But there's this constant urge to please, that fear of offending.

So when the teacher came round to look at my work in progress, I felt I had to apologised for making her daughter look so sad and stern. She said I didn't have to apologise, as I was just trying to draw what I saw. I sometimes wonder though how much of ourselves goes into a drawing. Of the 100% percent that makes the finished portrait, how many percent is the model we draw, and how many percent is ourselves? I notice again and again when I draw a portrait, that there always seems to be a certain touch of sadness sneaking in. And it makes me think, and wonder. Is that just my own, personal drawing style emerging? Or is there more to it, on a deeper, subconscious? Should I be worryied?? I prefer the drawing style option...

Although my drawings from photographs usually look like humans, there's often not muchof a likeness. I think this portrait is the first one that actually really looks like the model it's drawn from. What made me most happy was that the model herself thought it was a good likeness (and that she wasn't offended at all :) ).

At the end we only had about 20 minutes left to discuss and draw he profile, It was even more of a challenge. It can be difficult at times to persuade the brain to see what is actually there instead of what it thinks how it should be. The face, the profile is one smooth line, without any sharp, protruding edges, it keeps telling you. But it is wrong, and you have to learn to ignore it, and trust your eyes. With your eraser, if necessary. And even if you successfully manage to turn off your brain, there still is the challenge of putting on paper what you see. That chin line was a real battle, I can tell you!

Tonight's the second class, and I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be self portraits tonight, though, which I think will be a really difficult challenge. We'll see how it goes...

Portraits #9 and #10, and playing the "name game" again

At last a couple of portraits again. They're #9 and #10, which means that I've done one tenth of my 100 portraits projects so far. Still a loooong way to go, but having completed 10 still feels good.

The first one is a quick pastel drawing.

"Olivia Night"

The second one another "sofa drawing" in my sketchbook. He somehow ended up looking a bit like the photo of a wanted person. Maybe it's the angle.

"Peter Ellis"

Anyway. I've remembered an old game I used to play when I was young, the "name game". When watching the telly, or a film, I used to make up a name for myself from all the names from the screen credits at the end . I'd choose the first first or last name I liked, and then added a first or last name accordingly, and then kept exchanging them with other ones I liked better, until at the end I'd have my "perfect" name. I've started playing my name game again in order to give my portraits names and a bit of a personality.

So here we are, meet Olivia Night and Peter Ellis. Olivia Night is in her early 40s and newly divorced. It's been a hard time for her, and she's let herself go a little bit. But slowly she's started pulling herself up again and thinking about what to do with the rest of her life. Peter Ellis is a bit of a romantic, and still lookig for "the one",  but he has recently noticed that his hair's thinning and that he's getting bald on top. And he's not happy about it. It makes him look older than he is, and much less attractive to the girls, he fears.

Portraits #5 to #8

These past three weeks, I just didn't seem to find the energy to get working at my easle and drawing board in the evenings. With the freezing weather we're having at the moment, all I want to do is curl up on the sofa under my warm fleeze blanket, sip hot chocolate and watch the telly. And that's what I've been doing most of the evenings. But it's not that I haven't been doing anything at all portrait-wise. Most of the time, I was drawing into my sketchbook while watching the telly. 

When I set myself my 100 portraits challenge, I didn't mean to count my sketchbook drawings as "proper" portraits toward the challenge, only the ones done on individual, larger sheets of paper. But now I've been thinking. If I don't count half of the portraits I'm doing, how will I ever get to complete my 100 portraits? And really, these portraits take about as much time and effort as the other ones, even if they're only half their size. So I've now decided to count them as well. So here they are, numbers 5 to 8.

The process of drawing a portrait still completely amazes me. How everything starts coming together, taking shape and beginning to look like a human begin, against all expectation. The eyes are still the biggest challenge, noses still need lots of practice too, but the mouthes are beginning to look not too bad.

Does anyone happen to know how to arrange pictures in a Blogger page? Mine always end up all over the place, and never in the order I want them too.

Portrait #4

Finished portrait #4 last night, using some charcoal sticks I bought earlier. I bought them because I liked the fact that the box contained a range of grey tones in addition to white and black. But  I wasn't  too happy with them, though. The consistency reminded me more of those chalks used on blackboards, and they're very dusty.

At the moment, the portraits seem to develop a "life" of their own, with me having only limited influence in the process. I use pictures in magazines as a reference, but I'm not too bothered about producing any real likeness. It's the pose, the angle, the proportions, the highlights and shadows I'm interested in, and I just add layer after layer, wondering how she will turn out, what kind of emotion, mood will emerge. Here, I think it's a kind of pain or distress. Maybe she's having a slight headache, or remembering/thinking about something unpleasant. I'm quite enjyoing this rather intuitive process at the moment.

After I took the photo, I actually worked some more on her, I just couldn't stop. Maybe I'll replace the photo later on with the finished version.

#3 is finished

I finished portrait #3 yesterday last night. I'm quite pleased with how she turned out. Of course, there are still 100 things that could be improved, corrected, made better. Especially on the cheek, which looks a bit flat. I also planned to add a background at first, but I'm going to leave her like this, at least for the moment :)

And now, on to #4 :)

Some more thoughts on the 100 portraits project

On Wednesday, I talked about my 100 portraits project I was planning to do this year, in order to improve my drawing skills. The idea was to use my sketchbook to draw in, and the "100" wasn't so much a definite number, but more meant as "a lot", or "as many as possible". But I have now decided to really try and do 100 portraits this year, and not just into my sketchbook, but instead 100 individual portraits. Right now, I'm working on 40x40cm sketching paper, and this suits me very well. I want to use different paint mediums as well, but for the moment, I think I'll stick to the pastels for a little while. I really don't know why I haven't used these pastels more often before. I've used them only for sketching on to a canvas, really, but never on their own as such. But just love them!!!. And I think they work so well for portraits. :).

The good thing with my 100 portraits project is that it not only won't give me a lot of practice, it also means that I will have a perfect stock of reference images for all kinds of poses, postures, moods, and characters, etc. which I will be able to use for my paintings. And I just really enjoy spending some evenings doing them, and that, really, is already reason enough to continue.

This is portrait #3 I'm working on at the moment. Still lot of work to do on her, but I quite like her, and I just hope I won't spoil her.

I think I'm really going to enjoy this portrait thing!

Working on an other portrait tonight, and I'm am really beginning to enjoy taking my time to complete a drawing, working on the shading, blending and highlights. I was a bit sceptical about the attempting portraits, but I think I'm going to like it a lot. I'm usually too tired to take out my paints and stuff by the time I finally get home in the evening. But a bit of pencil or charcoal drawing, that is manageable. And so relaxing and satisfying.

This is a charcoal and pastel work in progress. I can't wait to continue working on it tomorrow!

100 portraits: exercises in drawing

Drawing and sketching is something I've always rather neglected. For me, (rough) sketching mainly served the purpose to outline a subject on a canvas, and no great attention was needed to be given to details, as it was going to be painted over anyway. Even during Art Every Day Month in November, when I started to draw and sketch more, I never took more time than 5, 10 minutes for a drawing. But this year, I want to dedicate more time to the fine art of drawing, and improve my skills. So I went and bought a new sketchbook (it's always good to have an excuse to buy a new sketchbook :) ) and got the basic tools out - pencils, blenders and erasers.

When looking through all my sketchbooks, paintings, and even photographs, I noticed that there weren't many people in them. So this year, I want to focus more on people. There are many photographers on Flickr , for erxample, who are doing great projects like "100 strangers" - taking portraits of strangers in the street. While I'm not planning to ask strangers in the streets to model for a sketch or drawing (not even for a photograph, to be honest), I want to try and draw 100 portraits. Or at least a whole lot, exploring different techniques and mediums. At the end, it doesn't really matter if it's a 100, or less, or even more. The main thing is to practise as much as possible. The new sketchbook will be for people only, and I hope that by the end of the year, it will be filled with them from cover to cover.

So yesterday evening, and the day before, I sat down at my desk and started with the basics. Basic shapes, and some simple faces. I didn't work from a photograph, or anything, just trying to get the basic shapes of the eyes (by way the hardest part!), the nose, the lips, and taking my time to blend, blend, blend. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though the results weren't always satisfying (yet). I think it should be a bit easier to use photographs, pictures in newspapers, magazines etc., or even life models, to work with, rather than trying to figure out the exact shapes, shadows and highlights in my head. I will make and take time to seriously practise drawing, especially portrait drawing, this year - along with all the other things. Sketching, drawing, acrylic painting, watercolour painting, photography.... Oh, I just wish I had more time!