I don’t often do portraits, preferring nudes and cats, but I’ve been trying harder to get a likeness over the past year because it’s good discipline and forces me to be not only very observant but also very accurate, which feeds into my professional development.
This is John, a life model I often work with but on this occasion I decided to draw a portrait instead of the figure. I used soft chalky pastels onto brown parcel wrapping paper. It’s a very large piece, about A1, and that gave me the opportunity to be very free with my mark-making. I tried to observe the Impressionist approach to colour theory and didn’t use any black; instead I juxtaposed complementary colours in the shadows. Despite the scribbly hatching, it was a very disciplined and planned piece. Oh, and it looks like him too. Result!
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