Portraits
It’s good to get out the coloured pencils and paper again! I tried different brands than I’ve used before: coloured Stonehenge paper and Prismacolor Lightfast pencils. There’s a nice moment in drawing a pet portrait (or any portrait) when it stops being layers of colour and starts becoming a friendly face! Then the focus can be on personality instead of technical details, although the technical side can be satisfying as well.
This portrait was drawn from photographic references on very smooth, white paper. Not the best choice of paper when it comes to pencil stuff but it worked out okay!
I did this portrait at the end of 2002. I forgot to add it earlier in the site, but adding the “Step by Step Art” section in the pages menu reminded me! You can see the drawing progressing from the photo references through to the final coloured pencil picture by following the menu or clicking here.
The photo I referred to was old and nearly black and white, so I beefed up the colour a bit and hoped for the best! I’m happy with the results. I did this one on A3 paper.
This pencil portrait was a new style for me and I’m happy with how it turned out. I kept the proportions roughly realistic, only getting cartoony with the rendering.
This acrylic portrait of a friend was actually painted without photo reference, using sketches from life, something I’d never really done before. It’s now in the possession of he and his wife, as are the sketches (a couple of which are truly terrible).
This drawing is coloured pencil on blue paper. I used photo reference (I should track down the photo and post it), although the photo had green grass (green seems a very popular colour for grass). The picture ended up at about 45cm x 40cm. I used chinagraph pencils to get denser whites and blacks, though I’m not sure if using wax-based pencils over standard pencils will cause problems later or not.
As to why I drew the grass as blue, I’m not sure! There were several possible factors: first, I may have already had the blue paper lying around; second, I might have thought it’d make the picture more ‘arty’ (I was planning on entering it into a competition); third, I was keen on the banjo and there might have been a subliminal connection with bluegrass music. I think it was a mixture of the first two options…
An old portrait of a friend’s dog. The drawing is coloured pencil on white A4 paper. Dogs don’t sit very still. One way of getting a good pose is to remove the dog’s head (with its permission, of course), do the portrait, then reattach the head with a home microsurgery kit.
Here’s the method I used on the day: The rough drawing was ‘eyeballed’ from a photo to get the proportions and shadow areas sorted out. The lines were traced onto the final page with the help of a lightbox, then the colours were built up one by one. Take a look at “3 Cats” in the tutorial section to see the colour process in action.
