Plaster Cast painting and working on Amy Florence course

[Bernhard Graf]

Hi my name is Bernhard Graf and I would like to share my plaster cast painting in oils and my progress on Amy Florences course. So I started with the Zorn palette but added then a bit ultra marine blue and I didnt had raw umber at home so I used burnt umber :). As you can see my set up is a bit chaotic, but on the other hand, I like it that way :). And in the end it was very fun to do and there lives now a happy little painting at my home. My light was just a light bulb, so warm light and not as suggested a cool light source, but anyway. I am looking forward to the charcoal portrait seassion what I will do today or tomorrow, we will see how I have time but I will post my progress here. The plaster cast painting of the ear was done in 2 hours (only the painting process) but it took me at least 1 and a half hours to get my set up right :). So long and stay colorful and creative :D.

Btw these are cellphone pics, but I am working on it to make my foto set up better :).

[Bernhard Graf]

Ok I draw a lot of Portraits in my life, so that said the sight size technique wasnt quite much for me, but I will not skip a Portrait by such beautiful references :). I am not entirely happy with the image so I will do another one of the references and then I will continuou with the lessons. So big thanks to Amy Florences course its amazing, I really like to see her process and how I can addapt her knowledge in my work, thanks.

[Bernhard Graf]

Hello hello :), I hope everybody has a beautiful day :). Here is a bit of my process of the Portrait I did. I hope you like it and I am looking forward to the next seassion from Amy Florence :D. Have a great day and when you have any feedback to my work just let me know :).

[Bernhard Graf]

Hi, I did now the value study with this georgous model. I used titanium white and ivory black, I am not happy with the likeness but all in all its a nice Portrait I would say :). I am looking forward to the next seassion, till then have a great and colorful day :D.

[wolf_cub_one]

These are nicely done!

[Bernhard Graf]

Thank you wolf_cub_one, I appreciate your words :). Have a great day :D.

[Bernhard Graf]

So I did not have time for the next oil painting seassion, so I decided to do another charcoal drawing. With these nice reference photos it is a joy :). I changed a bit of my approach and I think I and the image benefited of this decision :). Have a wonderful and colorful day ya all :D.

[Leo Di Fraia]

Great mark-making. Are you using vine or compressed charcoal? Have you thought about putting a tone in the background? The fingerprints are distracting. I do like the smudging behind the hair of the bottom portrait. Maybe more of that would attractive.

[Bernhard Graf]

Thanks Leo Di Fraia for the tip, its always nice to have another pair of eyes telling you something you wasnt aware in the first place :). So I give it a shot and made a drawing and filled it in with some tone in the background and I think that betters the drawing. On the next drawing I do, I will go more crazy because it tend to become a little bit static right now, but thats my personal feeling, I think I do nice portraits, but their is always a level up :D. And I also post my materials I use for my portraits, its basically some vine charcoal and some other stuff as you can see, I dont use compressed charcoal yet, because man its just some heavy thing :), but I will definatily use it in the future, just not sure how at the moment, but that is another riddle to solve for the future Bernhard :D. So thanks and I wish everyone a nice day :).

[Leo Di Fraia]

I agree. You do nice portraits.

[Leo]

Hi Bernhard,

I have tips for you in regards of getting your charcoal work to the next level:

You seem to have good skills in regards of getting nicely looking facial features and it’s not the part I’m going to say anything at this time
Your work suffers from some messiness that doesn’t need to be there.

I recommend you try take a piece of sandpaper and powder some of that charcoal on top of it and pick up a brush and “paint” to get more even gradations where you need them

I’ve found those cotton pads not very useful with charcoal – I recommend getting a piece of chamois leather and some stomps to create more even gradations along with brushes

Also, there seems to be fingerprints etc. from your hands and I definitely recommend using nitrite (and the like) gloves while working on charcoal because the oils of your hands really stick to the paper and create very hard to erase fatty surfaces on the paper that end up creating a mess, which is next to impossible to combat along the way

And finally I recommend you to try some toned paper so you don’t need to do create all the mid tones by yourself

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