"Brenna" 11" x 14" blended graphite & charcoal

Here's another portrait in which I worked on blending graphite and charcoal. I used my niece, Brenna's graduation picture as a model as I thought it lended itself nicely to the lights and darks I wanted to work on in . Also, I loved the pose against the tree. I'm afraid I fell quite short in capturing her lovely smile and the sparkle of her eyes. I really worked on the light here. My friend and fellow aritist, Connie who recently visited my little studio was kind enough to give me some direction on how I could improve on my use of light. I tried to put Connie's advice into practice in this one and I believe it really helped. Much thanks, Connie ! I continue to plan to venture out and do landscape. I recently purchased a French eisel which is made to do pleine aire work. I have only to come up with the nerve to try it.

Practicing form

I have been practicing different examples of form. I wanted to try something different and these exercises gave me a variety of challenges. Keeping proportions within reason are particularly difficult for me.

Spring Hat

An acyrilic portrait using a reference photo of my daughter taken a few years ago when she had long hair. I've been trying to learn to force myself to add more highlights and seem to be more successful with each successive attempt. Also, I have worked on improving the light conditions in my studio which I''m finding more and more important as my skills increase.

Above the Greens

Here's an acylic from a reference photo of my wife taken a couple of years ago at a wedding reception on a back veranda overlooking a golf course. The reference photo as an accidental good fortune of light that I thought would make a good subject.

This is my third attempt at this one. I increased the color temperatures this time. It seems to becme more and more challenging with each attempt but so much fun.

The Christmas Hat

A favorite hobby of mine is collecting old photographs and postcards of which I have a fairly large collection. It's so fun to see how people dressed so many years ago. Some of my old photographs are in the form of what is called "cabinet cards" which were popular betwee the early 1880's and and 1920's. I ran across one in my collection of a strikingly beatiuful woman in a vintage hat that I felt compelled to attempt to draw. Since I'm continuing to learn to keep values consistent I found the old black and white image an excellent reference photo as well as an interesting subject. I decided to do it in graphite and colored pencil and was rather disappointed in the hat. The reference had little detail and my efforts to add what wasn't there caused me to fall into that old amateur trap. I was able to get some nice shadows with the chair and the coat although it was rather tricky with so much dark in the reference photo. It was great fun over Christmas to work on this and I decided to call it the Chistmas hat using reds and greens.

"Tessa"

I've been wanting to try pastel mixed with charcoal and I recently got my chance with my niece Tessa's graduation picture. I know the hair was overworked with the pastel as I continue to struggle with drawing hair in either medium. It was another learning experience. The reference photo is quite gorgeous and I'm afraid I didn't do her justice. Next time I will try to do a better job on the eyes. I originally wanted to include them the pastel part but felt I had so overworked them in the graphite stage that it just wouldn't be worth the risk. Anyhow, maybe next time.

Festival Hats

Here are my daughter, Anthea and her mother sporting the Italian flag colors with hats at our Italian Festival. I'm continuing to work with getting the values right and not concentrating so much on getting a resemblance. I'm finding that the resemblance comes if I stay true to the values and composition. Anthea asked me to do the portraits in graphite and only the hats in colors. I found that I spent almost as much time with the colored pencils as I did the portraits.
Anyway, it was great fun.