Portrait Sketch and Wash Study
I knew it. Painting the Christmas Angel Doll earlier did set me thinking about how I used to paint so many portraits and now seldom do. The doll having no nose bothered me. If you missed it please see my last blog post! The features on the doll, literally looking as though they had just been thrown on casually, bothered me.
And so I found myself sketching. Yes sketching! Using a pencil! Something I rarely do.
I sketched a profile of a face. I tried to stay just with sketching the eyes, then nose and mouth but little hands came into my sketch too. Before I got too carried away adding every detail, I stopped sketching and painted my profile sketch using shades that were already on my palette.
I found Opera Pink heavily diluted to be a fabulous base skin tone shade. To create the fleshy tone I needed I added touches of Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Orange. My challenge was to create a flesh shade minus adding new pigments to my already full palette. This made me work harder to create the shadows and highlighted skin areas.
Of course now I want to add more colour around the face. And work on more portraits. But perhaps without using so much of a sketch next time, as the drawing in this piece really tempted me to stay painting within the lines rather than leaping " out of the box" as is my usual style.
Isn't it strange. I bought one little Christmas Angel ornament and that angel has effected my brushes in so many ways, adding her magic and tempting me to paint subjects that aren't seen on my blog very often.
Where will this angel lead me?
Tomorrow is another day, so we will see!
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This is sooooo wonderful. I took a few online classes to learn to paint portraits in watercolor and even though I'm a newbie, I'm hooked. I'd love to see you do more as long as you continue your loose style too!!! I'm so happy that litt,e angel had this affect on you. And thank you for sharing the colors you used. Finding the right palette for faces is the hardest part for me.
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