Monday, January 22, 2007

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

It's time to go back to the basics.

Something was said in watercolor class yesterday that made me think about what made me want to paint in the first place: portraits. Painting people's faces and bodies. And I haven't done that much, except for the 5 geisha I did. Time to get back to basics and return to studying portrait drawing and painting until I can feel comfortable with getting a good likeness.

So I printed out my Drawing Newsletter from January 2006. I saved every one last year but am a year late in getting around to doing the drawing. Better late than never, I think :)
If you're interested, you can sign up for this free newsletter by Michael R. Britton at http://www.artacademy.com I may get his drawing dvds this year, too.



Lin #1 - January 22, 2007 Lin #2 - January 23, 2007

The picture of Lin came from the January 2006 newsletter. My plan is to do one each day but each model twice. So yesterday and today, I did Lin. Did I get any better the second day? Did I get worse? Did I see things better the second time around or the first? I think this will be a real learning experience.



And here is Michael's portrait of Lin which was featured in the newsletter done in graphite and conte crayon.























2 comments:

Watercolors by Susan Roper said...

Rhonda,

I applaud your back to basics approach in practicing the drawing, we all should do that occasionaly.

I think you did a better likeness on the second attempt, the eyes are more like the original sketch. Did you notice that you made the head larger in proportion to the body? What I most miss with drawing is the negative shading to create the objects (eyes, nose, etc.) that I do with a brush. This seems much easier to accomplish with a brush than a pencil.

Good job....Susan

RH Carpenter said...

Thanks, Susan, for your comment. Yes, working in a sketch book you have to adjust and I did the head first and then tried to fit the shoulders in - not a good way to get the fit but I'm more interested in the faces right now so the body parts were just afterthoughts. I love this sketchbook because it has a rough texture that works with drawing very well.