Painted Faces

Not talking makeup, but watercolor and oil portraits – challenging and fulfilling, especially when I capture a likeness. I’m quite happy when my painting resembles the source, either a photograph or a painting by a master. This semester I finally decided to try oil paints which I’ve avoided since college studio classes. My strongest skill is pencil drawing, and I’ve been working on learning watercolor for a few years. I even expanded into gouache, another water-based medium with the opacity of oil. But now I’m rediscovering the bonus of oil painting – the opportunity to rework continuously as well as using glazes – transparent layers – to achieve glowing effects. The teacher will be demonstrating that latter technique soon, so I’ve been revising my “underpainting” of a Rembrandt portrait in preparation. Here is my progression of preliminaries along with a photocopy of the master’s work we are copying.

Sequence of attempts: pencil, watercolor rough, underpainting in neutral colors, value study of planes. Long way to go!!