Gel Light Watercolor Portrait

For this assignment, we needed to make a painting of a gel light photo of a model's face using watercolor by creating a form using light and shadows.

Steps

Step 1 : First, I made a front facial proportion sketch to understand how to draw a face and did this by following a video made by my art teacher - Ms. Ashley Hatfield. I then chose an image of a lady and repeated the steps on an A4 sheet to make a sketch of the front facial proportion, and then modified it to suit the model's face.

                                                 


Step 2 : I redrew the model on A3 paper and made improvements from the observations I made from my first sketch, such as shortening the length of the face and reducing the size of the eyes.

                   


Step 3 : I started by painting the skin with a diluted pink color by adding a lot of water. Then to add the shadows I added less and less water and started painting on top of the light base color. I added the tiniest bit of black paint to darken the color for the eyebrows, eyes, nostrils and shadows around the lips.


                                                 

Step 4 : Since I was unsure about how to add the texture to the hair, I just painted the hair uniformly with the blue and pink colors that I mixed with a tiny bit of black paint.

                        

Reflection

Some things that went really well was how I was able to show the light and shadows well and the facial features turned out really similar to the picture. Next time, I can improve the eyebrow shape which was different to the picture and also make the lips symmetrical. I faced failure in the very beginning itself because while painting the base coat, it turned out extremely uneven and blotchy (which is why I didn't take any pictures in the middle as I was initially frustrated). However, I persevered and spent hours using tissues with water to try to remove the more pigmented area to make it even, and then also covered some of these areas by adding shadows on top. I also learned how watercolor takes a lot of time and patience and that how your drawing looks in the start does not determine the end result.


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