Portraits and Goddesses

We are only on Lesson 2 of the Goddess and Poet workshop but I wanted to show what I've been working on. These portraits are done in a Moleskine sketchbook. I LOVE the soft paper and the buff color. First we were to sketch a goddess and use minimal shading with the graphite pencil. Then we were to lightly color over the graphite using only creams and browns for the face/hair and reds for the lips. We will add more to these pages later. We were just to sketch and color.

For this next goddess we were to sketch her in and do only a few lines of graphite shading. Then we were to color her with the pencils gradually building up the layers. I'm not too crazy about this one but it's all part of the practice. Then we were to color in her hair a base color. I'm in love with Golden's Iridescent Bronze Fluid Acrylic so I colored her hair in that. I need a lot more practice on the building up around the eyes and the cheek area.

The next lesson will be posted Wednesday and we will be adding more to the backgrounds of these pages. For the final two lessons we will work with the first portrait that I posted a while back (the goddess done only in graphite) that is mounted onto wood.

I've also done some work in an art journal that I'm having a little success at maintaining! Still pulling together images for the faux encaustic collages and will post those when I have something to show. That's it for today.

First Attempts At Shading

So we've moved on to Lesson 2: Shading the face with colored pencils. I never really understood the whole color pencil thing. Now I get it! You BLEND them! Duh!! Anyway, these are my first attempts at trying to give the face some depth. This first girl is the one I'll probably use for my project (the suspenders girl). I'll probably do another face or two of hers before I get it exactly like I like it. I kept the original in the sketchbook and just hold it up to a window and trace the face onto a new page of sketch paper to practice my shading. That way you always have your original intact.

This next one was just a practice face I made up. She was actually the first one I tried. Not bad but need to watch the videos again to see how Suzi did the hair.

These will be adhered to a wood support and then painted on here and there to jazz them up a little. I'll definitely use paint to bring out the first girl's blonde hair. Plus the wood support will already be collaged by the time we adhere the doll. So, still a lot to learn before we get to that point.

That's all for today. Just wanted to show first attempts. :)