Here is a portrait in watercolor I did of a young friend. Her father took a nice picture of her and posted it to social media.
She is a beautiful young lady and it was a pleasure to paint this for them.
The lighting in the photo was from the back and there was a lot of incidental lighting from the sides which did not give a lot of dramatic shadows to work with. This is part of what drew me to the project since it had a lot of challenges with light and tone.
I actually printed the photo from social media and traced the image onto watercolor paper,. since the photo was good quality. Though she is Chinese her skin has a lovely rose hue to it which was easier than I thought would be to render. I gave a wash of alizarin crimson as a base and then began to work in the middle tones with orange, sienna, and lavender. After the middle tones were laid down I use violet and ultramarine blue for the shadows. There are a lot of places where the cool and light values were mixed together creating subtle value changes, so I did a lot of blending and lifting colors out with clear water and tissue.
The mouth was several hours getting it right there are all the values between the lights and darks the cools and warms. the upper lip had an unusual reflected light on it and the lower lip was more in a shadow than usual.
More hours were spent on the nose, this is one of the areas that had a lot of subtle changes in values.
Normally I have a lot of difficulty with the eyes. She has brown eyes that are almost black so I painted them brown first and then washed black over the brown. The photo does not capture the richness of the results. In some ways, the Asian eye shape is easier to draw but is harder to get the gradual shading
I always do the hair and clothing last and I always make it simpler than it really is.
(c) Adron
She is a beautiful young lady and it was a pleasure to paint this for them.
The lighting in the photo was from the back and there was a lot of incidental lighting from the sides which did not give a lot of dramatic shadows to work with. This is part of what drew me to the project since it had a lot of challenges with light and tone.
I actually printed the photo from social media and traced the image onto watercolor paper,. since the photo was good quality. Though she is Chinese her skin has a lovely rose hue to it which was easier than I thought would be to render. I gave a wash of alizarin crimson as a base and then began to work in the middle tones with orange, sienna, and lavender. After the middle tones were laid down I use violet and ultramarine blue for the shadows. There are a lot of places where the cool and light values were mixed together creating subtle value changes, so I did a lot of blending and lifting colors out with clear water and tissue.
The mouth was several hours getting it right there are all the values between the lights and darks the cools and warms. the upper lip had an unusual reflected light on it and the lower lip was more in a shadow than usual.
More hours were spent on the nose, this is one of the areas that had a lot of subtle changes in values.
Normally I have a lot of difficulty with the eyes. She has brown eyes that are almost black so I painted them brown first and then washed black over the brown. The photo does not capture the richness of the results. In some ways, the Asian eye shape is easier to draw but is harder to get the gradual shading
I always do the hair and clothing last and I always make it simpler than it really is.
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| Watercolor Portrait of Young Chinese Woman |
(c) Adron
