Toned Paper Experiments

This is a drawing of my coworker Resmi's daughter, Fajita. (Names changed to protect the innocent.) In Heads & Hands we explored different colors of toned papers, from grays to blues and greens. This one is the color "Sand" (which my professor insisted on calling "sandpaper", confusing the heck out of us). I'm not sure I'm a big fan of toned paper in general, but some people like it because in building up the lights, it's more similar to painting than drawing on white paper. I just think that the white pencil is a bit hard to control, and stands out too much, but perhaps I just need more experience. "Sand", though, is too dark and greenish, and I probably won't use it anymore.

Last Self-Portrait

As a measure of redemption for all those I've massacred with my portraits, I was forced to paint this really horrible self-portrait for Heads & Hands. It's not a bad painting, but it doesn't really look like me, and I was totally unmotivated to put any time into it. It's interesting though to see how different it looks from my first painted portrait. We learned quite a bit even in the 3-4 weeks in betweeen.

Waterhouse Has Nothing to Worry About

This is our final 3-session painting in Intro to Figure Painting. On the left is the artist-in-training. This was a challenging painting on several levels. The 18"x24" canvas was the biggest I've ever used. My prof told me that in the art world it still is classified as a "miniature", but it felt gigantic to me! The two figure composition is challenging because you have to get the relative sizes and positions correct. Finally, we had to design an environment for the figures. I got the background from a painting by one of my favorite artists, the British painter J.W. Waterhouse. Since I added the background after the fact, it looks a little contrived, and the perspective is way off. Still, it was fun doing it and my professor liked it. Like most of my paintings this semester, though, this one will probably get painted over at some point. :)

Portrait Overload

I've been doing a ton of painted portraits for Heads and Hands and in the workshops. All of these were done in the last 2 weeks. It's really been a struggle, and my portraits have been very hit and miss. Slowly though I'm getting used to mixing up flesh tones and adding all the subtle facial features.