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.

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!

A little bit of orange

I started working on a little painting on Monday, the last day of my Christmas break.  A new painting, the first in the new year ("new" is the January theme for both the Creative Every Day Challenge and Focus52, which I signed up for in order to try and keep up the creative habit more regularly. I hope to incorporate the themes a bit more creatively in the future...). I wanted to incorporate some orange, start working with that colour, as it is the colour for January in the Creative Colour Challenge (more about this, and my other projects/challenges for this year, later). I love textures and structure, building it up layer after layer on the canvas.

I quite like how it turned out so far. If it was a lager canvas, I might even be tempted to just leave it like this. But it's only a 24x30cm canvas, so the effect isn't quite the sames. And I have an idea in mind that I'd like to try out. Something keeping with the orange theme.

So this is only the background. And it's ready to be painted on to. But before I go on adding my little idea, I first have to do some sketches and exercises in my sketchbook. Try the idea out to get it right when adding it on to the canvas.

But first, I think I'll have a little tea break, if you don't mind. After all, there's no hurry :)