One of the things I most admire about a lot of illustrators today is how they can start with a few bloblike areas of color, and gradually refine these areas into figures or faces or environments. As I keep trying to do 30-minute sketches, I admire this skill more and more. How great would it be to not have to do a sketch first? So I thought I would give it a try.
Today's model is the lovely Russian pole-vaulter Yelena Isenbeyeva. Long story. Lovely model, even for just a portrait. I'm posting the photo ref since for this it's really important to see where all I went wrong.
Last week I sat down and painted the following portrait outright. Just started painting with the photo ref open beside the canvas, no sketch first, just paint paint paint.
Uhhh, yeah. Ouch. You can tell what I thought of it by how I totally blew off everything surrounding the horribly badly proportioned face.
And yes, nose is always too big.
So I figured out that outright painting, for me, right now, would not work. I took some time (these were supposed to be 30-minute things again) and sketched from the same photo ref again, using my usual method for placing features, etc. This time we got...
Still not perfect, but BETTER. Definitely better, and definitely worth the time it took to do the drawing underneath. I didn't quite catch her likeness or expression, which I could see when I finished the sketch, but I went ahead and painted it anyway. I've finally gotten a handle on some brushes that work well with my old tablet on this computer, so I wanted to practice some with them.
Overall, a disappointing experiment, but one that has opened up a lot of other questions, such as what does it take to be able to paint outright? A better sense of proportions? Is there more drawing involved with the paint? Less guesswork than I was doing? Is there some way to take advantage of values and colors to help guide things?
More to learn, I guess. =) Always more to learn!
0 comments:
Post a Comment