06/02/21 - Week 18
This week, I have produced 2 portraits, 1 in a warm colour palette and 1 in a cool colour palette. For these pieces I chose to use coloured pencil. I have struggled a lot with hard or soft pastelles so I think looking for another medium to experiment with was a good idea. I do struggle with using traditional colour mediums in general as I am used to the digital experience of having the precise colour I want and not having to blend colours to get another colour.
I first attempted the cool piece. I think this is the weaker piece out of the two. As I started development, I wanted to try really hard not to experience the same mistakes as I did in the self portrait and make it overly stylised. I achieved this by taking a photo of my piece when I got stuck with it and holding it up to my reference, this made them around the same size and I was much more able to recognise stylisation or construction mistakes. As you can see I was able to produce a much more realistic and accurate sketch using this trick. Saying this, there are definitely some proportional issues still and looking at it now I can recognise the left eye is not low enough and is too high to be on the same level as the lower one. I think the sketch is still alright and at the time I was quite happy with it.
As I progressed with the piece I was finding it quite difficult to add colour to the lighter parts to the piece without other saturating it, I wanted to have the cold feeling of the piece stand out quite a lot but I think looking back it may have been beneficial to start with a base layer of blue and then erase where I needed to. At this point in time I was only really using blues but I had began to place down some purple in the areas that would be more red. I think this was a good idea and I think it adds the touch of warmth for the piece to feel a little bit more alive.
As I came towards the end of this piece, I added in the shoulder and i think this was a really good idea compositionally. The block of shadow that I placed in early was a mistake in my opinion, I don't like the harsh ending it gives to that side of the piece and I much prefer the gradual reduction of colour that the shoulder produces.
I struggled quite a bit with the hair in this stage, I had gone for a strand effect and not really a block of colour that this piece probably called for. I originally planned for the strands to become a bit less stylised but I found it hard to create a very dark area with the coloured pencil and it has caused the strands to stand out much more than I originally wanted.
At this point in the piece I had also stared to add some green in, I do like this and I think it creates a nice gradient in the colour palette whilst also emphasising the purples in the piece and adding some interest into the shadow.
I feel that the overall coldness of the piece is definitely conveyed but I am not sure about the emotion and mood, I feel like a lot of the dynamic of the original reference has been removed as I completed this drawing. I am not sure as to why this has happened but I really struggled to get the mouth the right shape and I think this removed a lot of the emotion and replaced it with a blank expression.
The warmer piece I feel was much more successful in some areas. I went with the same method for the sketch that I did in the first piece and as you can see my initial sketch wasn't accurate at all, I then slowly managed to pull it together by just using the trick I did in the previous piece. I still struggled a bit with this sketch in the end but I eventually settled with something that I felt ok with, as I experienced in the previous piece that when the coloured pencil comes in you can quite easily adjust the sketch and adding shading in general can help shape the areas I wasn't completely happy with. I chose not to include any of the drapery in this piece since I wanted the main focus to be on the face and I also liked the idea of recreating the fade of colour in the cool piece.
As I added some colour down I was much happier with the piece. I again can see that in the end I had created some inaccuracies at this point in the drawing. The eyes are much bigger than in the reference and there is some stylisation that I wanted to avoid that had become apparent. I was having a lot more fun with the colour palette in this piece as I was able to use some browns and skin tones. I used this to try to get rid of the amount of white that was showing before. I still think it is apparent but it looks much more complete this way and also distinguishable from the background.
I finished thus piece up with the hair and the fact that the hair was lighter in the reference it makes more sense for the hair to be a lot more strand-like and more as blocky so this style works a lot better here. I really like the effect the purple creates as shadow. I did again struggle with creating very dark areas and I think the darker parts of the hair could be put more into shadow to add more realism to the hair.
I captured the expression in this piece much better and I feel that it compliments the colour palette well. I think theres still some ways I could have captured a warmer expression though, as this one could again be seen as a little bit blank. I really like to capture slight emotion in blankness as I think it can be very telling but it is quite hit or miss as sometimes you can't tell the emotion at all. The expression in this piece could be hard to tell for some people which is probably not the best result.
Overall, I had fun creating these pieces and using coloured pencil was really interesting considering I haven't used it for many years. The similarity to just using a regular pencil allowed me to have lots
more control than I have with other colour mediums I have used. I don't think I could have produced an accurate or detailed piece with any other medium apart from coloured pencil. I have picked up quite a few skills so hopefully I can implement this into my next piece.
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