About face(s)

I was PMing with Erik Thurman, my agent-mate, about art and I mentioned that my favorite subject was portraiture. I told him I'd share some of my previous work, and here they are.

rough charcoal sketch

pastel piece of hubby's grandmother as a young lady

charcoal of myself in my 30s

watercolor of my friend's two daughters

conte crayon exercise to capture the planes of a face (she sat across from me in the class)

 And then there are rough sketches of portraits I never completed...

a friend and her husband on their wedding day (from 15 years ago)

my MIL and her second grandson; I started this when she was still alive and probably will never finish it

So how does one get good at portraiture? Studying the skull is one of the ways to improve.

Sometimes, it helps to get a feel for the 3D-ness of the head by trying to sculpt it.

my first roma plastilina bust in a class taught by J.P. Darriau

side view of above bust (just wanted to add that the model was very good looking and actually had hair, which we weren't supposed to convey)

I love doing portraits, but I do think that it's one of the hardest things to get right because it's difficult to render a likeness of the individual. You can draw an apple to make it look like an apple though it doesn't have to look like a specific apple, but if you're doing someone's portrait, you can't just draw a face to look like any old face; it has to look like that person who commissioned you.

Don't let that deter you though. The best way to get good at it is to practice...a lot! :)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams