Portraits

These were painted as half-figures in the studio, but the constraints of my scanner forced me to crop them as portraits. Probably better that way anyway.

Male Profile

This is a detail from a larger sketch of a male model. His expression came out a bit angry-looking. Probably a result of my caricaturing his brow a little.

I'm still evaluating this one. I like some of the details: the ear and sideburns, and the crazy tuft of hair, but some more control of the values and gradations in the flesh tones would help a lot. The shadow under the chin particularly bugs me.

Fall Session

It's been a rough fall session at Manifest with one bright spot. I managed to capture this male model in crude slashes of pastel. I was paying particular attention to the values and only varied my palette in the last 10 minutes. The face could use some refining, but I'm happy with the torso the way it is.

The composition is a bit static, but when cropped, the image greatly improves, I think.

Watercolor

Three weeks ago I decided to switch media. Not because I was bored with pastel —quite the opposite, as I feel I've barely begun to mine their potential. For years I've been meaning to improve my skill in using watercolor —forcing myself to paint the figure in this challenging medium should help a lot. After two lackluster attempts, I decided to move to a larger sheet of paper and put in lighter washes relying a bit more on my graphite linework. This is the result.



The colors got lighter as they dried (something I'm going to have to get used to.) So I may have to revisit this, giving more attention to the modeling of the hands and softening the bare pate. Darkening the background should help as well.