Portrait Class Week 7

The weeks has flown by quickly. Pina has taught me all about proportions and how to achieve likeness - I'm sure there is more to learn in the future. Our model this week was Judy, a dancer. She has a very slender fine boned frame "bird like" with very large eyes. For this reason I believe she is incredibly difficult to draw, as many of our class mates concurred. I was only satisfied with this last attempt (after numerous others)as it captures her fragile beauty.

Self Portrait Attempt #2

After being told that my previous self-portrait was not like me, that I am usually joyous and colourful etc, I thought it was time to do a flattering self-portrait. After Pina's last class where Serena posed with flowers, necklaces and lots of make-up, I thought I'd try one of myself with similar props. Generally, I am a colourful person, I love bright colours and wear them a lot. I am also usually good humoured and have a smile. I've to also add that I'm plump (no evidence of any collar bone, all buried deeply) and enjoy cooking, baking and eating, as they say "Never trust a skinny cook". But to be flattering, I removed some bulges and took an angle where my double chin is not very evident. What do they say about artistic licence!!!

Portrait Drawing Week 4

This week's model was Don, a 70+ year old man. Don introduced himself as a previous bank manager who gave it up after a mid-life crisis and redeveloped a couple of boutique hotels. Subsequently, he was approached at the gym and invited to be a model for a life drawing group. Now, isn't that something, to be requested to model in the nude when you are that age! Anyway, respectable Don agreed and that was the start of his modelling career. He tells us that his children are not comfortable with his new career and do not like any mention of the subject. Don still has a full head of hair, although it is not as lush as it was before. He has very angular features, which makes it a pleasure to draw. We were also asked to use colours this week, white, a mid-tone and charcoal. But my first attempts with just blue and white were interesting and Pina suggested that charcoal not be introduced. Don liked the second portrait - he thought it looked just like himself. I think it is great that we get a range of ages and both genders to model. Drawing perfect female faces doesn't really reflect people we know around us. Also older people have so much more personality in their faces and the lines make it more interesting than young faces.

Self Portrait Homework

Pina set us homework to do. We are to do a self portrait. I was always worried about self portraits, firstly there is the temptation to draw oneself as what one wishes to look like, not reality. Secondly, since I don't really watch myself, how would I know what is a typical pose? Anyway, after much manipulation of the mirror, easel and lights, I managed to get a setting I was satisfied with. I am now working with larger pieces of paper/ canvas - after Pina tells me that I observe a lot so I ought to do larger works. Most recent works is at least A2 size. My first attempt highlighted all the shadows and flaws. My double chin was much more obvious and so are all the shadows accentuating the downward curve of the mouth. I tried to paint it as close to life as possible and be as objective as I could. Then I showed it to my family. My husband, bless him, tells me that this is not me, that I'm prettier and younger. So I just rubbed out some of the lines and tried to make my double chin less obvious. You can see that the gaze is towards the mirror. Obviously I'm drawing my reflection so anybody who is not comfortable with it will know why. I, on the other hand, am most comfortable with it :-) My husband also says that I do not always look so solemn and sad. It is true that I laugh a lot. But wouldn't it be insane to grin at yourself in the mirror whilst attempting a self-portrait? Perhaps next time I shall have to follow Eunice's suggestion of liberal amounts of wine prior to painting so that inhibitions don't get in the way!

Portrait Class Week 3

This week Pina showed us another technique, where the whole paper was ground in charcoal and we either rubbed away or used white conte to indicate the light bits and darkened the shadows. This is similar to most pastel techniques, as pastel is usually done on coloured paper, as the mid-tone. She also wanted us to focus on the dramatic lighting. Our model was Claire from Glasgow. Claire is travelling the world and making some money through modelling. She is petite but has a lovely face with high cheekbones. Her accent is typical Glaswegian but after having visited numerous times now, I have no trouble understanding her. Claire also has lovely neck/ shoulder bones (really should have paid attention to their anatomical names).

Portrait Class Week 2

This week's focus was on breaking the face up into planes. Pina gave us quite a few tips:

• the eyes start from the eyebrows down to the bottom of the eyeballs (quite often there will be creases, there is an anatomical name the eludes me).
• eyes are parallelogram shaped.
• eyes are positioned in a V shape on a face
• noses have wedges at its tip

There was more but she uses their anatomical names that I cannot for the life of me, remember. The model was Eric again! For those who haven't been following the blog, he is the 60 year old model. For his age, he looks great, he has all his hair even though they are white, and he has nice muscular definitions for a 60 year old. He sure pops up in a few places. Here are a few illustrations from the class.

I then went home and thought that "here is the solution to my struggles to get a likeness". I was determined to try it on my long suffering husband, who was working on his laptop. It worked really well as this is the closest I've got to capturing his face.

Further to the pastel experiment, I did this pastel painting (sort of unfinished but will get there when I brush up on pastel skills), again on a subject dear to my heart. It is a depiction of my 5 year old daughter playing tea party with her Nani and her favourite dog, Harry. I like this because it captures a typical scene when they are together - Nani is very very fond of her grand daughter.

Portrait Drawing Course week 1

Today I began a portrait drawing course at the SCCC under Pina Bartolo's tutelage. I've recently begun some portraits but struggled to get a likeness and thought that it would be great to get some direction/ ideas from a professional.

There are 16 persons in the class which made it very crowded. It probably is not possible to do painting given the space constraints. It would be nice if we could, though. There are easels everywhere and Pina could hardly move around the room.
Our model is Olivia who is of possibly hispanic background. Olivia is beautiful but in a sulky way. Her expression at rest is one who is comtemplating some minor grievance... although I am sure she is a nice a person, really.
Today's lesson is to get the structure right. Because we focus so much on features in other people, it is a bit of a struggle to draw them because we immediately dive into drawing the features. In reality features take only a small percentage of the head. To make it look realistic, we have to draw the shapes of the head, neck and shoulders convincingly or else it does not look plausible. This is a similar lesson to that in life drawing - geometry first to 'set the scene'.