If you want to learn how to express movement in your painting, or more of an emotion, you might want to experiment with different positions of the face. I know that sometimes it seams too daunting to start pointing our face in different directions, but practice will just make this easier.
Here is a little video on how I talk about overcoming this hurdle, it starts by watching my hands for few minutes, but please bear with me, it changes.
Now Lets see if we can draw few faces pointing in different directions.
Now we will focus more on an upturned face. I know it does not look that great, it’s till challenging for me too. But with practice I am finding out that it gets easier. For example as I see here now, I should have positioned her nose little higher, but sometimes our brain tells us things that are not true, it’s really not what we see, but we are preconditioned to judge what we see. As you see your mistakes, you learn not to make them again.
Let’s have another shot at it, this time with some music.
Detailing a Face
Here is another exercise for you. We will use a charcoal and gesso, a large piece of paper like the Strathmore 96lbs paper and you can stretch it on a piece of a thick plywood board on an easel, and then get really expressive. Using bold strokes with your charcoal and a brush, creating a value painting that is very loose in detail.
And here is more detail video with three faces, this and has two parts.
Part One
Part two
The Wabi-Sabi Portrait
Wabi-sabi is described as the art of beauty and imperfection. It denotes asymmetry, melancholy, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes. It’s aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
I wanted to create a portrait that is based on these principles and for that reason I chose a face and expression that inspired melancholy and color palette that was muted. The surroundings of the portrait were to be simple and not to detract from the overall scene.
The colors I chose again were Paynes Gray, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Magenta and Gesso. Brushes sizes 2, 4, 6, Charcoal, Irresistibles Liner in Plum color, Inktence watercolor pencil in Plum.
