Faces

So for my last tuesday class, we finished the vintage portrait lesson working on a portrait using the smaller studies and paintings we did. Remember to use the contour drawings, value studies and painted sketches to keep the lights and darks in the proper places. The rest is just coloring! The painting is about 8x11 inches on watercolor paper.

I also included a watercolor sketch I did of my son. He is working on his portfolio for school and left a photo reference of himself, lit from underneath, at my studio. He is pretty creative and it inspired a future class to do with my students... If you take away the familiar, you are forced to look at and draw what you see, not what you think you see. Kind of like drawing upside down... This is also about 8x10 inches.

Continuation of vintage images

My tuesday morning class has continued to explore painting people using vintage photographs as inspiration. We have been practicing with value, color and quick studies. The class is doing well and we have a few that have put together complete paintings... some alittle abstract, some very charming and all work to be proud of! Next week we will continue with more quick studies to warm up and then work on composition. These are my quick, small, simple, demos done on an 8x10 inch sheet of paper.

Vintage man

I had the class work from black and white, vintage photographs. I like the way that old photos fade. The students don't get all caught up in detail and can simplify their paintings to just shadow shapes. They also can choose their own colors and ended up using some fun, unexpected colors. All of them did a great job. This is my demonstration, about 8x10 inches done in watercolor.