Portrait of Carrie

Being a part of the military means you make friends and then they move away (or you do). It just comes with the territory. I recently made a new friend here in LR and now she's about to move to Japan. I was so happy to have made this particular friendship because she is a fellow artist, and her husband works in the same squadron as mine. Carrie has been especially helpful to me because of her willingness to go for lunch and impart to me all the wisdom she's gathered in regards to taking the leap into creating artwork full-time. Thank you, Carrie!

Carrie is an amazing watercolorist who primarily paints still lives. You should she how she captures glass! She is self taught, and very talented. Visit her website here or like her on Facebook at Carrie Waller Fine Art.

So, since she is leaving, and I wanted to say thank you, I thought, What better way is there between artists than to make her something? So the other evening I sat down to paint a portrait of her and her son inspired by a photo posted on Facebook. I have been watching some videos, lately, of a talented dry brush oil painter from Russia that I admire greatly. I have wanted to try out his techniques, so I thought I'd give it a shot on this portrait.

I took out my watercolor paper pad, mapped out the proportions of the final piece, and began the sketch.

Then I got out my oils, chose a brush that I thought would work well, mixed up some color, rub rub rubbed it on a pallet and...turns out I have the wrong paint (not slow-drying), or wrong oil, brushes or paper, or something because it was just not working! This man uses his brush to apply paint as if it were make-up, very softly, rouging the shadows in here and there. My paint was not rouging, it was streaky and any back and forth strokes made for horrid lines on my practice paper, which thankfully I had the foresight to use because I did not want to have to sketch this out again.

Below you can see all the oil dry brushing I did before I decided to scrap the idea and go for charcoal.

Once I decided to go with the charcoal, I felt like I at least had the control I wanted–I could smooth the color with my finger instead of it drying immediately upon application.

I took the below photo to show that the process of charcoal can be quite forgiving. I wanted to shade the majority of her face, so I lightly rubbed the side of the charcoal across the textured surface leaving this...

It's scary looking at first, but that's why you can use things like a chamois cloth or your finger to even it out. Then, you can either use more charcoal or use a kneadable eraser to get the desired tone. This sort of pushing and pulling is what makes charcoal fun.

I did go back and finish the left eye in oil as well. Actually, I ended up doing quite a few things in oil on this portrait, so I didn't master the technique I wanted, but at least I learned another use for oils in conjunction with charcoal that I like. Happy mistakes.

Here's what my set up looked like for the evening...

And, of course, the final piece. I have not been able to photograph it the way I like it–the way it really looks. Capturing the subtleties of the gradations as well as the overall contrast is difficult. I guess it is better that a drawing look better in person than in a photograph, but because I do not end up keeping most of my artwork, I would like to be able to get a photograph as close as possible to the original. Hopefully as I am able to build or buy a light diffusing studio setup, I'll be able to capture those elusive subtleties.

Happy Wednesday everyone! Come back tomorrow for another Throw Back Thursday piece. This week's will be a self portrait from elementary.