Watercolor Portrait of Young Woman Looking Down

This is a little watercolor of a young woman with a dark brown complexion. I did it on a 9x12 paper. It was inspired by a photo in a catalog.

I sketched her a couple of times before attempting to paint the picture. Using a lightbox, I traced the best sketch onto the watercolor paper. First, I used a little blue, lavender, and violet in the background to break up the white.  The underpainting of the portrait began with a wash of orange mixed with sienna for a reddish-brown color.

I ran out of time, so I let the first wash dry and returned to it a few days later to add another wash of burnt umber and ultramarine blue for the shadows. I kept deepening the shadows with more blue of the blue-brown mix and began to add some Payne's gray to the darkest areas.

I wish I had done the blue highlights earlier than I did because I inadvertently washed orange into the highlights areas that needed to be lifted out with clear water but left the paper stained, which muddied some highlights. It is probably more realistic that way anyway.

I often overdo the darks and found I had to go back to lift out some color. The color was not looking rich enough, so I added some more sienna with some red mixed in. There was more need to lift out some of the colors since I kept overdoing it.

I always leave the hair for last. I started with a wash of brown-black. After the first wash dried, I went back over it with Payne's gray for the darker areas. I had to build it up a bit. 

Watercolor Portrait of a Young Woman Looking Down

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Watercolor Portrait Of Young Chinese Woman

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.

Watercolor Portrait of Young Chinese Woman

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Watercolor Portrait Of College Girl Daughter Looking up

This is a painting I did of my daughter. It was a picture from one of her social networks.

For some reason, I have a lot of problems photographing my work and getting the colors to show true. The hair is brown with some canary yellow but here the yellow looks kind of green mustard and the brown is not as rich as my painting. The overall tone of the skin is warmer in the original picture.

I did this painting with a lot of thin watery washes adding layers over layers to get the tone, value and the roundness of her features.   I started with alizarin crimson and added yellows on top for the highlights. The shadows were done with violet, lavender and ultramarine blue all washed in with more layers on top of layers. I was constantly lifting color out that was too deep or the wrong hue. Just the face was about a five-hour project. I was using my smallest brushes for most of the time. I spent another hour on the hair, I wish I had thought out the hair more and did something more creative with it than I did.

I normally do the background but here I left it blank just to be different. It really is white and not gray like the photo.

Watercolor Portrait Of Young Woman Lookin Up

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Watercolor Portrait of Young Woman Looking Down

I spent a few days working on this watercolor portrait. It was a very enjoyable project and a very frustrating project at the same time. 

My model is one of my favorite young ladies who is one of the sweetness people I know I was hoping to capture her sweetness in this project.  

The over face turned out well but the photo doesn't do it justice. I began with a wash of light rose and then went over with some senna and violets to get the shading in and the highlights.

The hair in the reference photos I took was a mess. She has beautiful long hair but it was all over her knit shirt.  I should have simplified the hair and edited it with more care to give the picture a greater unity.

I may come back to it later and try to clean up the hair a bit. I'll try lifting some of it out with a brush of clear water and paper towel. Then reintroduce the fix with a fresh application of color. I might use black acrylic or even black gesso to the hair.

Watercolor Portrait of Young Asian Woman With Long Hair.

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Watercolor of Young Asian Woman in Knit Hat

This is a watercolor of a young friend and student of mine. She has a face of such subtle expressions that I am quite captured by it.  She was wearing a hat during an art lesson and I took some snapshots of her. She was not particularly happy with the idea of me taking pictures when she was not prepared but I liked the spontaneity of it.

She is a very spiritual person and it is refreshing to find that in a young lady. I hope to capture her reflective nature in art.

Her long black hair gives some extra dimension to the portrait. Normally I downplay the hair since it is so subject to fashion and I don't want some future generation looking at the painting and saying what strange hair styles they had back when that was painted, I want them to see something deeper in the person I am portraying not clothing or hairstyle. In her case, the long hair is so intrinsic with the young lady that I couldn't consider painting her without the long black strands.

This painting took about eight hours to finish over a period of two weeks. I find that if I try to do too much at once I get enthralled with some little area and sacrifice other parts. I took a long time sketching the face. I did the background with the same color as her blouse to strengthen the mystical effect of her personality. I put blue highlights in her hair, it is a little artificial but I wanted to pull the background into the portrait. At one point I had blue in her face but as I was working it over the blue was washed out by the warmer tones of her skin. Her complexion is more chocolate than I portrayed her, I have had this problem before with the Asian complexion. I think that the blue background is affecting my pallet and choice of colors.

The knit cap was a salmon red but I toned it down for the painting and used it for a texture contrast to the other textures of the hair and background.

It photographed warmer than it actually is.

Young Asian Woman With A Knit hat

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Watercolor Portrait of my Daughter in her Red Head Phase

Every parent thinks their kids are the most beautiful but I am convinced my daughter is. Here is a portrait I painted of her that was taken from a photo that a friend took of her during her sophomore year at university.

It is not an exact representation but close enough to be recognizable.

I call it, "Her Red Phase," her hair was more auburn and subdued in the photo but I am making art so I took some licence to make it more red this gave some contrast to the background.

Watercolor is difficult to work with when it comes to portraiture since it dries lighter than when it is applied. Another difficulty is that mistakes are unforgiving there is some things that you can do to correct a mistake like wet the area and blot it up but that is still limited. I try to build up the colors and add layers on top of layers to deepen the colors but it can become muddy if you are not careful. I did some layering and color blending on the paper.

The rose flesh tone is a little of a challenge I mixed reds and crimson oranges and browns violets and plum colors for many of the different hues of the face.

I used a flat brush for the background and painted wet into wet. For the portrait I used small #1 and
#2 brushes and a liner brush.

I am very happy with the project.

Watercolor Portrait Of Daughter in Red Hair.

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Watercolor Portrait Of An Old Guy With A Ponytail

This was a project I worked on for about a week, off and on. I know some people can create a masterpiece in a day or less but I just don't know how they do it. I find that I need to study a picture for a while, sketch it a few times to work things out and then paint in stages with constant revision and critique along the way.   I wonder if I get done or just get tired of the project.

I liked his face it had deep complicated shadows, contours, texture, and wrinkles so it was a joy to make something out of it.  I wanted to make it more ethereal so that you needed to look at it for a moment before you realized it was a face but I got involved with the image and kept adding detail.

Watercolor Portrait of Old Guy With a Ponytail.

I used the brush very wet and kept splashing color into puddles of color sometimes letting it dry and then splashing fresh color on top. I regretted not leaving more of the paper empty on the far left side of the face and a few other random places.

I think I made it too representational and should have kept it more impressionistic especially with the shadow being so dramatic.  It is not my goal to make a super-realistic picture but to try to find something spiritual and give that voice.

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Adron 

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Watercolor Portrait of a woman looking down

This is a watercolor portrait of a woman looking down and away.  I did the painting on watercolor paper 9x11.

I began with a pencil drawing that was not too detailed, then I started with the grays.  After laying down the grays I cam back with some of the blues and violets.  I didn't add as much warm tones as I would normally but did put in some rose color and senna to balance the cold hues.

I don't aim to make it very representational but to make an interesting picture that has a statement and beauty.

Watercolor portrait of woman looking down and away. 

Normally I keep black to a minimum but here I went a litter further with the black and grays. The last thing I did was to use a little titanium white acrylic to dampen the colors and give a few whitish highlights.

The last step was to do the detail work of eyelashes eyebrows and some line work in the hair.

As I was painting it I began to fear that the portrait was going to turn out badly but I actually am very happy with the way the painting turned out.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Adron 

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Watercolor Portrait Of A Young A Young Man With Sideways Look.

This is a little watercolor with some instruction and commentary,   I painted this to relax one night this week. It was inspired by a photo. I sketched it out the other night but didn't have time to paint it until later.

Watercolor portrait of a Young Man with a Sideways look

I started with the background and did some washes in just a few areas. Next I did the shadow areas of the face.
I added the impression of the shirt and jacket but kept it minimal.
I used black in the hair but thought it was too much black so I added violet and blue.
I splashed some blue and reds in the face and built up the shadows.
I wanted to keep away from the warm colors and was going to do it in blacks but thought that lacked imagination so I added a lot of lavenders and violets.

It is a fine painting and I enjoyed painting it. I hope you enjoy looking at it.

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Watercolor Portrait Of Young Woman.

This is a 9 x 11 portrait done in watercolor.  The face was a little tilted on one side and that is a composition that I always have problems with so I thought this would make a good practice piece.

I should have taken more time to sketch the project out; it is maybe the most important part of a painting because no matter how skilled you are at technique nothing can fix a bad design once you are committed to it.

Watercolor Portrait of a Woman

I started with a lot of washes with the browns and warm colors of the face and then let that dry. I later deepened the face values and gave it more color. The nose was in the wrong place but I didn't realize it until the mouth was committed. Like I said the tilted face gives me a lot of problems.  I had to use a lot of clear water to lift out the colors of the nose and repaint it in the right place, but I had already messed up the mouth.  I thought the mistakes looked OK so I left them- that is the adventure of watercolor.

I realized one eye was higher than the other, this is always tricky on a face that is tilted over sideways. I reworked one eye to lower it and then the other eye to raise it. I think a casual observer would never have seen the problem but I would not be happy. It was always my intention to have a lock of hair over one eye but then thought that two or three locks would hide my mistakes.

I did the hair with a wide moppy brush and kept it loose. I did not plan to paint in all the hair but only enough to describe it and have areas of hair receding into the background.

After it dried I thought the face needed a little warm up so I splashed in some yellow here and there, and put a streak or two in the hair.  The last step was to take a liner brush and use some white gesso to bring back a few highlights that were lost.

I hope you enjoy.

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Watercolor Portrait Of A Woman,

This is a watercolor sketch I did the other day.  I was experimenting with a style that was loose and spontaneous.  I tried to work as quickly as possible to preserve the freshness.  I kept the sketch minimal since I was not going for something in a photo likeness.  I used a lot of water at first and let the colors blend on the paper.  I started with a large round and then a medium round, and the last was a liner brush.  At first, I didn't use any black, but it was too pastel, so I drew a few black lines and put a little in the eye and lashes with a liner brush.  I finished with a little white acrylic here and there to restore some highlights.

Watercolor Portrait of Woman  

The green was almost an afterthought, but the hair needed something, and I didn't want to just establish a pattern or be predictable, so the green was an inspiration that worked out. I wanted to balance the colors of cool and warm without being too obvious.  I was not trying to accurately represent the woman's image but to capture the mood and an air of mystery.

It was one of the most enjoyable projects I have done in a while.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Adron 

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