Tag: People

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Art Drawing Faces Gouache Painting People Portrait

Strange Light, Weird Palette

Experimental Palette Portrait, gouache, 10x7”
Experimental Palette Portrait, gouache, 10×7”

What was I thinking? The reference photo1 had strange lighting. From the left was a cold, greenish light, and from the right a very red light. To make the painting even more “fun,” I chose a weird limited palette2.

Below are my two preliminary pencil drawings and the painting, second layer done. I should have left it as it was—blocky, but fresh. Instead I labored over it, trying to match values and colors to the original despite the crazy palette.

I forgot how much I love gouache’s immediacy vs. forever fussing and overworking. By the time I decided to stop it was way overcooked and I wanted to start over to get it “right.” I refrained and moved on to the next painting with happier results.

  1. I don’t have permission to share it ↩︎
  2. Viridian green (a weak, transparent green), Permanent Rose, Cadmium Red Light, Cadmium Pale and white (from a very old tube with thick sticky paint). No black or other dark colors. ↩︎
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Art Faces Gouache Painting People Portrait

My Bestie B Being Silly: Portrait in Gouache

Portrait of B in gouache
B Being Silly, gouache on paper, 9×6”

My bestie B was giving away an arm chair and my sister asked for a photo of her sitting in it to get an idea of its size. So she perched in the chair, made a face and took a selfie.

I cropped it down to just her pretty face to try to capture her sense of fun in a painting. After 3 drawings I finally got everything at the right angles. My brain kept trying to straighten everything out and make it symmetrical.

Then came 3 paintings. The first one went directly in the trash. The second one was better but when it reached gouache’s “ugly stage” I lost my confidence and started over again.

This is the third one. I can see a few things I could fix if I kept working on it, but my current goal is to stop painting sooner rather than too late. Also I’m using gouache these days partly because it doesn’t allow the forever fiddling that oil does. At a certain point gouache just says, “Nope” and stops cooperating if you try to keep adding paint or fiddling.

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Art Faces Gouache Painting People Portrait

Grumpy Old Brit Character Actor

Portrait in gouache of old British male character
Old Brit Character Actor, Gouache, 10×7”

My last painting of 2024 is this gouache painting of a British or Irish character actor from one of the great detective shows on BritBox (but I forget which one).

I tried to do a Google reverse search from the photo I took from the TV (see below) to learn his name but it failed, giving me everything from Donald Trump (?!) to an advertisement for tweed jackets. Do you know who he is?

After dong a couple sketches it was time to paint. I was inspired to use gouache instead of oils because I hate the way my oil paintings almost always end up taking forever and feeling overworked while I try over and over to perfect it.

I don’t do that with gouache, I get more carefree, playful and have fun. It had been nearly a year since I used gouache and it felt like I’d forgotten everything.

This was my get-reacquainted with gouache painting and I’m excited to start the next one, also a still from a TV show.

Who am I? Reference screen still from TV
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Art Faces Oil Painting Painting People Portrait

The Hawaiian?

The Hawaiian, Oil on paper, 10”x7”

When I saw a photo of this guy, I loved his funny rooster-tail man bun and made him my next portrait victim. I decided he was Hawaiian, gave him a tan and put him in a happy beach scene (see below for the process). It was fun to try to create the effect of bright sun on his shirts.

Original reference photo from Pinterest
(Left) Combined reference photo; (Right) first layer of oil paint

Above on the left is a composite I assembled in Photoshop for the reference photo. I can’t remember if I found the beach scene on Google or used Photoshop’s AI Generator to create it because I tried so many different things.

Working sketch
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Art Faces Oil Painting Painting People Portrait

Freckles Minus Freckles

Freckles Minus Freckles, oil on gessoed Arches Oil paper, Zorn palette, 9×7”

Her nose! That interesting shape is why I wanted to paint her when I saw her photo (see below) on Pinterest. In the photo she is speckled with freckles but I was only interested in getting that nose!

Painting at 2 hours ( + 5 minutes to mess things up).

My intention had been to paint this in one session but I started too late in the day. I could have left it as it was at the the two-hour mark, but instead of walking away and getting dinner, I stupidly decided to just touch up one thing (which was unsuccessful of course because I was exhausted) so I had to basically touch up everything.

Inspiration photo from Pinterest; no photographer credit provided
Categories
Art Faces Oil Painting Portrait

Fallen Star: Portrait of Justin Timberlake after DWI

Justin Timberlake After DUI Bust, Zorn palette, oil on paper, 11×7’

There was something so poignant about the news photo of Justin Timberlake after his bust for Driving While Intoxicated and I wanted to capture it in paint. Then something hilarious happened when I was preparing the photo of the painting for posting.

I clicked on the ℹ️ symbol in Apple Photos to make sure the picture I was selecting was the correct version for posting. I noticed a little white dot appeared in the middle of the photo. When I clicked on the dot, Apple AI/Siri told me that this was a painting of Robert Fergusson painted by 1700s Scottish painter, Alexander Runciman. WTF?

WTF Siri?
Robert Fergusson by Alexander Runciman
Categories
Art Oil Painting Portrait

Portrait of Ilhan Omar’s Daughter

Isra Hirsi, daughter of Ilhan Omar, oil on paper, 8×7.5”

I was so struck by the photo (see below) of Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, when I saw it in the New York Times. She was being interviewed after she was arrested for participating in a pro-Palestinian protest at her university. The look on her face seemed to say so much.

First sketch, 10×8”

After I sketched her (above) I had a dilemma. I loved the sketch but could see that I had gotten the dimensions very wrong. So do I paint from my sketch or try again to get the correct likeness? I decided to do another sketch, get it right and then do the painting.

As usual I got about halfway through the 12×9” painting, wasn’t happy with it and abandoned it, choosing to start over. I went for a smaller format since I was working from a screenshot of a tiny photo and was relatively happy with the results.

I used the Zorn palette to simplify things, but added a few other colors for her shirt.

Here’s the reference photo.

Reference photo from NYT

Here’s the original article in the New York Times.

Categories
Art Faces Oil Painting Painting People Portrait Self Portrait

Getting Wiggy

Selfie with Wig, oil on paper, 10×7“

My social media feeds kept showing me wigs (how do they know my formerly boisterously curly hair was getting thin, grey and wimpy?) The influencers looked so cute in their (probably very expensive) wigs that I decided to try one.

A dog park acquaintance who always wears a wig recommended I order one from Temu. It was cheap, hideous, huge, hanging over my eyes and shedding. It quickly went back to Temu, a store I’m not a fan of.

Then a friend pointed me to some higher-quality inexpensive wigs on Amazon. I bought the one I’m wearing in the picture because it reminded me of what my hair looked like in my 20s: long, thick, wavy, chestnut color.

Unfortunately, not being anywhere close to my 20s anymore, I looked ridiculous in it close up. But it was fun to take a selfie wearing it and then paint a self-portrait before returning the wig.

About Painting: I recently watched an online painting video with Carol Peebles. Her guidance about comparative measuring in portrait drawing clarified so many things I’d been confused about. It helped me to get a likeness with much less struggling.

Painting is so much more fun when starting with a good drawing! I’m really happy with how this turned out. I think it’s my favorite self-portrait ever and I’ve done at least 50 of them over the years.

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Art Drawing People Portrait Sktchy Watercolor

Handsome Artist as Grumpy Guy (Zorn Palette)

Watercolor portrait of Richard B.
Richard B, watercolor, 10×7.5” Zorn Limited Palette

When I saw the reference photo of fantastic artist Richard Banks in a Sktchy watercolor class, I wasn’t immediately inspired but decided to give it a try anyway. Maybe because I had nothing invested in the outcome, just in the learning process, I ended up liking the painting for what it is.

Sketch #2 (Left) and Sketch #1 (Right)

My first attempt at drawing him was pretty far off so I didn’t try to correct it, I just started over. I was satisfied with the second attempt above.

Zorn Palette + Thalo Blue Green Shade for background

Even though his photo was mostly cool colors, I decided to try to use the Zorn Palette and see if I could make it work. The pigments I used were WN Ivory Black, Utrecht Cadmium Red Light, Holbein Yellow Ochre.

I did cheat slightly and did a preliminary very light wash of Winsor Blue/Green Shade over the whole sheet of paper. Typically with the Zorn palette, the black is used as a blue but this Ivory Black seemed way too warm for it to work.

Reference photo
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Art Faces People Sktchy Watercolor

Emily in Watercolor with Odd 3-Pigment Palette

Emily Christen from Sktchy, Watercolor, 10×6”

I watched the interesting class taught by Kirsten Britt on Sktchy and then, as usual, I painted the subject completely differently than was instructed. Kirsten’s work is beautiful but is all about splotches (here’s her version on IG).

3-Pigment Triad, Limited Palette

I used an odd limited palette for this one which made it a little challenging. The pigments are DS Perylene Scarlet, DS Cobalt Teal and WN Raw Sienna. It wasn’t possible to get any real darks so I stuck with a high key painting.

Original sketch, graphite on paper, 10×6”
My check of the sketch in Procreate

I got very close with my sketch, even with the camera distortion; I only needed a few small adjustments.

Work in Progress – First passes of color
Photo reference