Learning to Make Realistic Faces

 In an earlier post I talked about my quest to paint a wrinkled face.  Or rather how not to make them look like a ghoul. I did a man and a woman.  I go and pull those watercolors out of the file when I need a laugh, but also when I want to feel good about my progression efforts. I learned a lot doing just those two pieces.

For the past couple months I have been doing portraits of ladies I do not know off the freebee pics on the internet.  Ladies who will not scrutinize my work and wonder why I left off this or that from their faces or changed something up.  Each of them I try something new. The results are a mixed bag.  Let's discuss them as we go along:

Let's start with the earliest ones.  Why?  First, to appreciate the progression. Second (and the real reason), I know you will scroll down to have a look at the train wreck first.  I will save you the trouble.

Pic 1: I wish I saved the picture.  My intention was to try my hand at underpainting the face with blue.  I think that's the word. I thought it would help with making her look more life like and give her some depth.  Ha!  As my friend Brenda would say "Very 1500's". If ya know, ya know. She is flat.  She is a zombie.  She looks like she has a cascade of Christmas fudge flowing from her undead head.

Now don't scold me for being critical of my own work.  I still like her.  I don't like whoever beat her up and put a fist to her eye.  But you have to start somewhere.  I started here.  I am no drawing phenom. 

 

Next up, Pic 2 is the freckle faced beauty.  I have seen that others across the interwebs have chosen her as a muse. She is indeed stunning.  I chose her FOR her freckles. I've never done them.  I think I did a fairly good job with her.  In fact when I completed her (I finish each of these ladies in a day - I don't labor over them. I am impatient) I trotted out to the living room painting in hand, waved it in front of my husband and declared her good.  I waited for no other appraisals.

The hair is better,  She does not look like a zombie because I ditched the blue undertones. She has some depth.  I like her nose and lips. A+ to me.  Remember, I am a neophyte.  It will become even more clear how low on the watercolorist rung I am when you see the next one.  You might want to go pee before scrolling down. 

OK. Here we are. Pic 3:  I warned you to go empty your bladder. I saved the original picture so you can appreciate how sideways I went and how beautiful the woman actually is.  I went from A+ Freckled beauty to another ghoul. In my defense, the way she is slumped back into the couch - it didn't work.  I originally had the couch, but it looked BAD, so I scrubbed it off (no easy thing with that staining blue).  What I was left with was black Gollum.  I may have to revisit painting black people later in my watercolor career.

I took a couple weeks off from portraits.  

Once I got my fill of a couple dogs and a nicely painted cat (more on them later), I got back to trying my hand at the portraits again. Pic 4: Observation: hair and fur are not my strong suit.  I also think all nostrils look like pig snouts to me.  I screwed up her hair.  Shocker. It looked far worse than this.  FAR.  I almost punted her right into the trash, but no.  I went and got myself some tea, came back, scrubbed off the 1970's curling iron hair do and rehabbed it AND threw in some inktense bar black lines to give the hair some movement.  Yay.  I like her face and under her chin.  The light going across is from the window.  Sorry about that.

 

 

Finally, Pic 5.  I did the lady below today.  She is significantly different than the model.  Why?  Because her hair was too much like the one I did yesterday AND I fully screwed up the change I was intending to make, tried to fix it and thought - here we go again. So I rewet it, threw some paint down and salted it.  Now I like it.  Plucked from the fire.  The face I am happy with. I drybrushed some facial shading and I like the effects.  I have done three portraits with hands.  I'm glad I did.  They are challenging - which is the point of the thing.