Quick portraits As far as a good likeness is concerned, I failed. Maybe I captured her spirit instead, I guess I’ll never know.
I had to had forgotten my watercolours at home but luckily a friend had a spare set. They were very bright colours, Russian I believe. It was fun, I was out of my comfort zone.
I am still practising my watercolour portrait painting techniques. This one took me a day to complete and I’m happy with it. It’s not perfect of course, not as far as I am concerned anyway.
I should be editing a film for YouTube, I will have to force myself from doing more portraits until I’ve completed the editing. The next Watercolour Journey episode by the way is from the Gaint’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.
I continue to practice painting watercolour portraits. Like I said before I use Sktchy App (iPhone only) for my model source. Even though there is a lot of faults with this I am quite happy with it. It’s a journey, like everything else it takes time to become accomplised at anything and watercolour is a difficult technique so it’s gonna take a while before I can fell comfortable doing portraits. Please do not ask me to do a portrait, it would just stress me out. Ask next year maybe! 🙂
Size: 31 x 41 cm on Fabriano paper.
Yes, I am having fun practising my portraits, the reason for this is I can see a large improvement every time I paint a new one. I have been using portrait images downloaded from Sktchy App (iPhone) which is great for artists and self-obsessed selfie users who want a free portrait of themselves.
I don’t know how long I can keep this up? I want to paint a portrait every day for the foreseeable future so that I can improve in this area. The only problem is there are other projects that need to be taken care of too. I can juggle pretty good but dealing with my new art career is tricky.
I am happy enough with this portrait, I like the nose – that’s enough for me to like the painting. See, I am not too demanding on myself! I spent too much time fiddling with the shading so it’s not perfect but I know I will improve each time I do a portrait and that’s incentive enough for me.
Painted on Suanders Waterford CP 26 x 36 cm.
Click the image below if you would like to see the full- sized painting.
I have been trying really hard not to paint sail boats for a while now, it’s hard – I just love to paint them. The reason I am avoiding them is so that I can develop as a watercolour artist by painting other things that I am not used to and find difficult. Portraits are difficult, the one that’s featured here doesn’t resemble the original model very well. I wasn’t trying too get a perfect likeness, my goal is to master painting skin and building the facial form, I think creating a likeness will improve as I practice.
The model reference by the way was downloaded from the iPhone only Sktchy app. Why it’s only iPhone users who can use this service I do not know. Click the thumbnail below to see the full-sized image