Before we ever picked up our brushes, Janet had us loosen up and helped us "see the forms" by having us do about 1/2 dozen blind contour drawings. These were done by putting our paper in front of us, looking at the model, and drawing the model while NEVER looking back at our paper = blind drawing! haha Fun but crazy and it helped us warm up. The idea was not to have something that looked good at the end but to have our eyes and hands coordinate.
Then we did some preliminary sketches before painting the models.
Then we got right into painting after watching Janet do several demos for us. She is completely open to suggestions - if you need help with eyes, she'll do just eyes. If you need help with mouths, she'll do just mouths, etc. But she doesn't like doing ears - so you're on your own there :)
My portrait of Skip trimmed off about 20 years but it's not finished - so as I work on this, he'll age a bit more (I hope). Although he came by and looked at the finished pieces and thanked me for making him young again :) I'm not as happy with this one as I am with the other two portraits but Janet said it looks like him and I caught his glance and attitude - high praise!A Janet Rogers quote: "They aren't wrinkles. They're just value changes."
So the next time you look in the mirror, just tell yourself this :)
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