Another Fine Pencil Sketch by Carol Smith

 

Here is another of my friend and fellow artist, Carol Smith's fine pencil sketches. Carol captures  beautiful highlights, shadows and form in her pencil sketches, they radiate!
And soon I will post her finished John Calvin sculpture - I have posted the clay model before and it has now been cast in bronze, finished and mounted on a wood base.

Mama Agata's Terrace - Ravelo, Italy - September 2012

 

Here is the beginning of a painting from a photograph that I took of Mama Agata's terrace in Ravelo, Italy. We took a cooking class with our group of friends at Mama Agata's home which overlooked the Amalfi Coast. The day of cooking was amazing as was all the scenery in the Amalfi area. Rich, soft color everywhere. it was hard to tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. This watercolor is done on a half sheet of Arches paper that I did a horizontal gradient wash on first to establish a good rich underpainting. The colors will become richer  and deeper as I continue to add washes of color.

Progression of Young Woman in Prayer pastel

 

Here is the rough portrait on the left and the finished portrait on the right...I toned down the skin, added highlights back in, molded the cheek and nose shapes more fully, worked the head scarf to be more molded to the shape of the head and added a background with some highlights in it.

Young Woman in Prayer - pastel

 

Here is my completed pastel portrait of a young woman, eyes bowed in prayer. This was done from a photograph that my teacher, Deb Richardson provided. Great learning experience! and I am pleased with the final portrait.

Pastel Portrait - still a work in progress

 

Still working on the pastel portrait - compare to the last post. I have darkened the darks and since doing that I have lost the vivid highlights so I will work next week on brightening the highlights again. I  do think that I am beginning to capture the "volume" in the face. I still need to work on the shadows in the nubby scarf on her head. Of course,  the background hasn't been worked at all so the grid lines will disappear once I begin to fill in the background.
This has been a super class, wonderful teacher-artist, Deb Richardson, and great fellow class members who work really hard on their own pieces as well as being able to give very observant and constructive critique. In a few weeks we are going to bring our cameras to class and work on photography of models (each other in the class) and get tips from Deb  on what works and what doesn't work when photographing a model.

Pastel Portrait Class

 

This is my beginning effort from Deb Richardson's pastel portrait class that I am taking through Cordovan Art School at Jerry's Artarama in Austin. Deb has shown us how to do a "landmark grid" to transfer a picture to the pastel board (this is an 8 x 10 light grey ampersand board worked with Rembrandt soft pastels) - with this landmark grid you don't do a conventional 1" x 1" grid but you make note of the important features & their location - eyes, nose, nostrils, brow, lips,  etc. You can see the soft pastel pencil lines of the grid in the gray background to the right of the face. These will be completely covered and invisible when the portrait is completed. This style of using a grid is much more practical and gives you the information that you need to transfer the picture- the picture is then drawn in grid by grid. Then, after the picture is transferred, we work the piece UPSIDE DOWN! This disconnects your brain from seeing the entire portrait and helps you focus on the individual grid pieces so that you can get the highlights and darks laid in correctly. It also helps you actually  "see" all  of the color that is in the flesh - not just crayola crayon flesh tone but oranges, pinks, blues, browns, purples, greens. It is amazing the different colors that you use to render the flesh  tones correctly. We also use pieces of white paper to section off areas of the reference picture to work on  the portrait grid by grid - again separating the areas into smaller pieces helps to see and render what is there, not what you  imagine that the face should look like. This has  been a great class, I have learned a lot already. Deb is a fantastic teacher and artist, a good communicator, and makes the class fun too! She brings out the best in each student and helps timid artists blossom.

Poppies - finished

 

THESE POPPIES HAVE A NEW HOME IN GEORGETOWN WITH KERI AND DUANE!  

 I finished the poppies painting. I used a reversed-L design pattern to complete the picture which highlighted the poppies and preserved the delicate yet vibrant under-painting. This wasn't my original design so I wouldn't show this painting or sell it SO if you would like this piece, please shoot me an email or comment thru this blog.  You can HAVE it!

Watercolors in Progress...

 

These two watercolors are projects from Kathy Summer's watercolor class and are in progress right now. Both are done on Arches half sheets.  The original designs that I am  painting on both of these pieces are by Kathy Summers. The one on the left is of poppies swaying in the wind.  I  did a swirling under-painting with  washes of Indian yellow, midnight blue and Da Vinci red.  The painting on the right, although hard to see the penciled pattern right now, is of  koi and the under-painting is done  with undersea green and turquoise. The under-painting is washed onto very wet paper. After it dries then I began to work on the designs,  re-wetting some sections and drybrushing others.  
CLICK on the pictures to see them larger and get more detail.