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Thus far, my “style” has been to accurately capture what I see. My goal with figure drawing and portraiture has been visual realism. However, I often feel there is more emotional truth in the poetry, abstraction, or style of a portrait. It’s time to up my game in this area and that takes a bit of letting go of (or at least finding some balance with) an often debilitating perfectionism. With this 100 day challenge, I’d like to experiment with materials and style in portraiture, with the aim of honing my own personal style and ability to tell a more accurate story about my subject’s emotional or internal state.
This is a quick portrait in ball point pen and water color, using an image from the Costumed Figure Drawing class (great class, btw!) I’ve never really worked in ball point pen before and the lack of eraser is a serious challenge! The water color was a bit of an after thought in composition, I kind of like how the warm bright colors vibe with the blue ink. This was maybe the fastest portrait I’ve ever done…which is good for me to practice and I think works for the composition as I was trying to portray a bit of urgency or an unsettled feeling. I took Mark Westermoe’s watercolor portrait class and I just started Joseph Todorovitch’s portrait class (I’ve never painted in oils before). I’m excited to delve into new materials and techniques!
Nice work! I look forward to seeing more from you.
When it comes to copying versus designing I agree. The greatest works of art in history are designed, not copied. It’s what you can create, not what you can record which can really influence your viewers on a deeper level. Those habits can be hard to kick, so stick with it!
This is a self portrait after a bad day. I used a freebie ballpoint pen and the red is a cheepo hardware store peel-away grease pencil. I’m trying to unlearn my perfectionism, so the sloppiness is intentional, and definitely a reflection of my mood. I’ve been working through the costumed figure drawing class and I like watching Charles Hu’s pen drawing. Though, I am more inspired here by Chris Legaspi’s ball point demo that I watched a while back. I like his shading style a lot. I’ve been trying to really hone my essential lines, like outlines and shadow shapes and then (especially here) go a bit crazy in the shading. It’s weird shading with a pen, it always looks a bit like bruises to me.
As for design, I had trouble with the chin and shadow area on the right side of the nose. I’m striving to get good enough so that I can be less sketchy with my lines…instead of finding the correct line through sketching, just knowing where I want to go and going there (I think that’s also a metaphor life). I’m clearly not there yet, but pen helps this learning process because you can’t erase nor hide anything from yourself. I melded my braid into a collar and I’m not sure why or if it works. Right now I’m just trying to get out of my own way and learn to trust my intuition.
This was definitely a color challenge for me…I used two different reference images, one with a weird yellow/green filter. This is mostly watercolor: I used a little bit of complimentary purple for the shadow areas and then went in with a gold prismacolor for some of the darker shadows. I didn’t want to use black or graphite and gold was what I had lying around and freshly sharpened. I think it works ok as I wanted to keep it soft. It’s pretty small, about 3″x3″. I don’t have very good lighting in my house, so had to wait until daytime to get a picture that captured the color correctly.
This is a portrait in watercolor and graphite on low quality sketchbook paper. Image reference is from the portrait with hands class…though I did not include hands in this portrait. I tried to work pretty fast (as fast as water color will allow). Already I see that should have put a shadow tone over the white part of her eye on the shadow (right) side and soften the edge of her chin against the backdrop of her dark hair. Her lips seem a little bit off and I’m not sure how using a complimentary blue/green in the shadows on her skin really works. Also I’m never sure how to do forehead lines or wrinkles with out it looking horribly unflattering. It’s always a fine line between accuracy and flattery. My process for this was 1)sketch with a 2B pencil. 2)A few layers of water color 3)Add darks with a 6B graphite pencil 4) then I went in with a florescent red prismacolor pencil on the lips, nose, lightly on the cheeks, and a tiny tiny bit in the nostril a la Rembrandt (he adds like a cad red in some weird places where there is reflected light off the skin or where light shines through an ear). Ok, so this is clearly not a Rembrandt, merely an amateur 30 min sketchbook scribble, but I really love the idea/technique. It reminds me that we’re all made of blood and muscle and light. And I will jump at any opportunity to use my florescent prismacolors in a picture of something natural like humans or plants or animals. Still trying to get better picture of my color work…may have to invest in some better lighting.
This is a ball point pen “sloppy copy” of an Andres Zorn print. I love love love his line work in the shadows. I do these really fast master copies (I call sloppy copies) because it allows me to just use my eyes and my hand and let go of the part of me that critiques every line that I make (sometimes even before I make it). I love Andres Zorn’s work and am really curious about the limitations he creates for himself. I feel like creating limits for myself in order to push the bounds of creativity and picture making without having to many decisions to make. I just bought oil paints for Joseph Todorovitch’s portrait class…I could only afford a few colors, so Zorn palette is it.
This is the best of my efforts today. These are some 5 minutes poses from Charles Hu’s costumed figure class. I’m getting faster and more confident with the ball point pen, even if today’s work is not as good as previous days, it feels good to work on speed and simplifying. I added some water color.
Another ballpoint pen and prismacolor pencil on a brown paper bag. I’m not sure if brown paper bags are archival, but I really like drawing on them. For some reason I make better drawings with materials that have basically no value. Almost every time I try to make a drawing or painting on fancy paper or fancy materials, I mess it up. Does anyone else have that experience? How do you get over it?? I would like to figure out a way to hack my braid so I don’t have this problem. Regardless I do like using a toned paper. I watched Charle’s Hu’s lessons on costumed figure drawing on toned paper. I think I have a different drawing style/approach than him. It’s helping to watch different people draw to figure out an approach and style that works best for me.
I like your style and I agree that the brown paper is working for you. I’m also using very cheap materials at the moment, trying to get a lot of mileage for little money. I think the important thing is to be aware of your natural preferences and what methods work for you, as well as your artistic style and vision, and eventually figure out how to put it all together. For example, if you prefer brown paper, you could tone a canvas brown or just work on archival brown paper or board. I like your use of red against the brown background. You could keep exploring that style as you transition to new mediums.
Thanks Bryan! I’m using the brown paper bag as a toned paper…but it’s not the tone that helps…it’s like the fact that it’s so cheap that I’m not worried about messing up as much. And when I’m not worried about messing up, I feel more free and create better work. I think just practice, practice, practice is the key to getting more confident with any material.
Playing around in procreate for the first time ever! I’m just playing around with colors and brushes and trying to get free. What are your favorite brushes? tips? tricks? tutorials?
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