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

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

Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or see one of the favorites in the sidebar.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

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

(c) Adron

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

Thanks for taking the time to look.

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites. 

 Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

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.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. 
Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or try one of the favorites in the sidebar.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

Watercolor Of My Daughter In Her Purple Hair Phase

Here is a watercolor portrait of my daughter who has colored the lower half of her hair with purple.

I sketched using a tracing box and a printed image that was taken from a photo she sent me.

The paint was put down in layers starting with the background using a flat wide brush and giving the colors an up and down sweeping texture.

The face was done in washes but I didn't work on the hair and sweater until after I was confident that I had established the facial features and expression. Even though it is my daughter in her purple hair phase I didn't spend too much time on the hair because hair styles are so trendy and such a passing fashion and I do not want someone distracted by it in the future.

After a while I was working all over on the picture letting one area dry while I focused on another. The deep shadows on the face were a problem there is color in the shadow but the shadow dominates so I was afraid the form of her face was getting lost as I worked over the shadows and both added color and lifted out some color. Some places I had to dab the colors in and then lift some out.

Watercolor dries lighter than when it is applied so sometimes I had the values too dark or colors too intense then I had to lift the color out with a brush and some clear water.

I wanted it to look like she was taking form out of some or clouds of color. I do not try to paint for photorealism since so many others and this gives more of a statement.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my work.

I took several breaks and set it aside for a few days at a time eventually finishing it after about three weeks.

Watercolor Portrait of Girl with Purple Hair.

Being my own worst critic even now as I look at it I see little things I would like to tidy up or change. But if I do not say I am done sometime I will never finish.

Thanks for taking the time to look.

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites. 

 Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

A Quick Sketch for Fun Of a Young Gypsy Woman's Face

The human face is the most challenging of all artist endeavors.  There is so much that can be communicated in the face through expression and pose.  Every picture should tell a story and you could paint or sketch the same person a hundred times and never repeat the same expression or duplicate the same message.

I believe an artist must draw portrait often and paint people with every opportunity.  So when I had a few minutes on a Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do I pulled out a magazine with some people and randomly selected one to sketch.  I do not waste time choosing since I will eventually sketch all of them.

I have some art supplies hidden under the couch so I can respond to the artist craving if it should hit me while I am sitting in the living room watching tv or something, so I pulled the pad and a generic pencil out and began a quick scribble sketch of the face of a young lady sitting on a gypsy wagon step illustrated in the magazine.

My approach was to just sketch quickly and not worry about details.  I scribbled things in place lightly and then scribbled corrections over the first scribble.  Appling more pressure I added more form and shading.  There was another round of corrections with hasty scribbles and more shading.  This was my approach throughout as more pressure was applied and values deepened.

Only when the picture was done did I erase anything and that was only a little around the eyes to sharpen the detail some and a little lifting of some shadows that had gotten out of control.

Often I spend a lot of time with a blending stub but this time I only used the stub around the background.  It is a drawing and not a photo, so I am not trying to make it look super realistic but just to represent the subject while making a piece of art.

It turned out to be a nice value study of a face. It would be the first step to doing a more serious painting.

Quick Pencil Sketch of Young Woman Wearing a Beret Hat/

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. 
Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or try one of the favorites in the sidebar.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

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

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. 
Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or try one of the favorites in the sidebar.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

Charcoal and Pencil Portrait Of Young Woman

 I do not attempt to draw something to make it look like a photo but I want my drawings to look like a drawing so I leave some of the creative processes in place and use the pencil strokes to give a rough effect, as you can see here in a little sketch I did while watching tv with my wife.

I hide some paper and pencils in a box under the couch so when I am in the living room I can just pull them out and do a little doodle.

My inspiration was a woman in a magazine. It was just the first one I saw and had no real reason other than keeping busy during my wife's show.

The face at three-quarters with a tilt is one I have a lot of difficulty with so it turned out to be a good choice since I could use the practice.

I started with a light pencil sketch and then went over it with a light charcoal pencil. I use the rubbing stub to blend and then reworked the whole picture again. I had to use a kneaded erasure a bit to keep things clean. I noticed some of my original pencil marks from my beginning sketch was creating an interesting effect of randomness as they crossed some other lines, so instead of eliminating them, I went over them again to deepen the value and left them in. I reworked the entire project again using a darker charcoal pencil and did more cleaning up. I reintroduced some of the pencil effect in the shadow behind the head in the upper left and lower areas.

Sketch while watching TV

It was a fun picture to draw.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. 
Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or try one of the favorites in the sidebar.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

Watercolor pencil and marker portrait of woman in 3/4 view

This is a little doodle I did with some watercolor pencils and I finished it up with a marker.  It is an ok picture and really a project that was a practice piece.  I wish I had my kneaded erasure with me so I could have lifted out some of the pencil that I used for the basic drawing- it just goes to show you that you should always be prepared.

Using watercolor pencils are not something I do often but I didn't want to get all involved with setting up my paints. Watercolor pencils are easy to sketch with and then you can wash over them to blend and deepen the colors. They are a little hard for me to control still but I hope with more practice that I will get the hang of it.

The picture turned out a little more representational than I wanted it to look I was hoping for something more artsy.

Watercolor pencil and marker portrait.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. 
Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or try one of the favorites in the sidebar.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

Pocket Sketchbook Portrait

I carry a pocket sketchbook and recommend all artist do. I have had many opportunities to sketch and was glad to have the little 4x6 book handy. Sometimes I keep it in a coat pocket or in a messenger bag with some other art supplies, including pencils and mediums and a few photos or a magazine with pictures to use for inspiration. Sometimes I might be in a coffee shop and jut pull out a magazine and start from there to do a picture and that was how this little portrait came to be. As I drank a cup of coffee I pulled out a clothing catalog I picked up and kept in my messenger bag.  In the catalogue was a woman modeling a sweater with a high collar. I felt it was time to just do a little drawing of a face so I sketched this one out.

I used a basic hb pencil and a stub for most of it and then a few erasers like a classic pink eraser and an artist's kneaded eraser. I sketched it lightly at first and then progressively darkened things over until I felt it was done which probably means I got bored with the project. After sketching it I crumpled up the resource page from the magazine and went back home. At home I looked at it again without the benefit of the original photo and I made a few changes to the hair and face.

I like the results and it was a rewarding afternoon with coffee and my sketchbook.

Portrait done in a pocket sketchbook

I may use this as a study for a painting at some future date.

Please see the tab for pricing options to commission your own portrait in charcoal.

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

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

 Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.
(c) Adron

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.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. 
Thanks for taking the time to look. 
Use the search box to find more of my work you might like or try one of the favorites in the sidebar.  

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

Pencil Drawing of a Young Oriental Woman With Long Hair.

I do not always enjoy drawing a beautiful face, they are too common and the person is usually very demanding of representing some concept of perfection. But this beautiful Oriental woman has a matching beautiful personality. She has become a favorite model for me.

I did this quick study in pencil using a 2h and an 8h for the darkest areas. The long hair is very interesting for me since it gives opportunity to experiment with flowing lines that I do not always get to try. She often has one eye hidden like it is playing peek-a-boo.

 

Pencil Portrait of  Young Oriental Woman

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work.

Thanks for taking the time to look.
 Adron
 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites. 

 Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Charcoal Portrait Of Dwain, The Lumber Yard Man

This is a portrait I did for my own pleasure and for practice. It is Dwain who is just a guy who works odd jobs this portrait was inspired by a photo of him on a temporary assignment at a lumber yard.

I liked the dark mood that was in the photo and in his expression. I did not intend for him to look sad but the photo was taken when he was especially tired.

As in all my drawings, I began with a 2b or 4b pencil and then after the basic composition is laid out I move to charcoal or whatever medium I am working in.  I did the first layer in hard charcoal and then did a lot of blending with a blender stub. I wanted to leave the picture a little impressionist or parts of the face to be undeveloped and other parts to be overdeveloped for emphasis, but I got so enthralled with the process that I kept working it and developed a more realistic picture than I intended.

I saw an art student of mine use tissue to buff the medium and soften it which is a nice technique to give a softer texture so I borrowed her method and buffed out the medium in the background and parts of the face.

I finished the portrait with a soft charcoal pencil which is a darker medium. I did the darkest areas being mindful not to overdo it  I was going to leave the hair in the shadows so the face would look like he was just about to emerge from darkness but the softer darker charcoal had such a nice contrast to the buffed layer I had created earlier that I couldn't help but draw in the coarse hair.

Charcoal Portrait of  The Lumber Yard Man. 

I think I am very happy with the project.

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

Adron 

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

(c) Adron

Watercolor Portrait of a Young Asian Woman With Black Hair

This is a watercolor I did as a practice study for a larger work. I am trying to study my subjects more carefully to try to understand the person as well as the image that I want to create. This young lady is also an art student. My impression of her is that she is a very spiritual person which, of course, is very rare in a person so young, but her spiritual qualities are something I would love to portray in art.

I am fascinated with her long black hair. I have always drawn or painted people with wavy or curly hair but have not experimented with the possibilities that the flowing lines offer with the long straight hairstyle.   I know she will cut it short because most women get tired of all the work and bother of long hair so I feel I want to do as many studies of her and her beautiful hair while I can. I think this picture shows her as a reflective person. Actually when I took the photo that was the foundation of the painting she was concentrating and working on repairing a broken paint brush.

I might try a different medium for the hair in a future project since the watercolor was a little too translucent. If I used ink I know it would be very stark but maybe acrylic might be a good option. I love working in mixed media it expands your possibilities.

Watercolor of a Young Asian Woman

I really had a hard time with her skin tone she is more chocolate than in my picture but I will get it more correct next time.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. Thanks for taking the time to look. Please take a moment and visit my online art gallery link in the sidebar to purchase my work.

(c) Adron 

Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Charcoal And Pencil Portrait Of a Woman Looking Up, A Study for a Painting.

This is a sketch I did as a study of a model who I hope to paint a portrait of some day. Her head is turned up and she is viewed slightly from below which is a very difficult post to capture.

I find her long silky hair to be a subject of interest and want to explore how it can be used in a portrait. Long hair can be symbolic of so many things I hope to do a few paintings of her in different cultural contexts.

The placing of the face is off center a little and normally I would not do that but my photography of her was a little off center and so I took inspiration from the mistake and I felt it worked in this case.

I started with a hb graphite pencil to outline the face then began to work the portrait with a light touch of the pencil. I did a lot of pre-shading of the face. I did a complete drawing in pencil at first but when I photographed it and looked at the image I saw a lot of issues with the values. Sometimes an artists will look at a project in a mirror or upside down to critique their work, but I find taking a photo and looking it on a screen shows me areas that need to be fixed.

I returned to the project and redid it in charcoal. I used a lot of charcoal in the hair, of course, but used a blending stub to pick up charcoal and shaded in the face.

It was a fun picture to draw. After I finished I regretted that it was done on some cheap copier paper since it was intended only as a study but I became so engaged in it that I went beyond a study.

Charcoal and graphite study of a woman looking up for a painting

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

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Mixed Media Study For a Portrait in Modern Style.

This painting is a study I did in watercolor, ink, and gesso of a woman. In this study, I was trying to work out the colors and overall feel of the project. It is the third step in this project since I have already completed two sketches of the same portrait. There are moments I feel pretty discouraged and am considering scrapping the project and going onto something more fun and less work, and at other times I feel like this is going to work out nicely.

I see some things I am going to change on the final project. I tried to use fountain pen ink to do some shading, but I think it turned out inconsistent with the overall feel. Another is that I used a felt-tipped ink brush on some of the lines, and I think it looked amateurish, so I will use a liner brush on the final. I will still keep the pen and ink for some of the drawing aspects of the picture, such as the facial features and the sweater. I think I am mostly happy with the colors, but I think I will work in more yellow as a first step to give the face some sort of highlights. I need to add some highlights to the nose in different places and correct the jaw-line.
I think I will make my face a little thinner.

I am working in watercolor since my studio is too small to accommodate much else, but I think this would make a nice oil painting.

Mixed media portrait TEVY

You can see the finished project where I made some changes to my other blog. CLICK HERE.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. Thanks for taking the time to look. Please take a moment and visit my online art store to purchase my work.

Adron 

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Mixed Media Portrait of Young Woman Named Zoey

Here is a project I did in a day. It is a portrait of a young woman in three-quarters view so the face is slightly turned away and in this case, the chin is up so she is tilted back a little.

It is mixed media. I started with a pencil sketch then used ink to put in some of the basic lines. I used water based markers to sketch in some parts such as the hair and the background. The majority of the area was done in watercolor. I early on chose the cooler colors to complement the effect of her pose. She is blond but I decided to use blue and white in the hair. I used white gesso in the hair and parts of the face, and background then used black gesso on other areas. I use acrylic on parts of the hair and face.

Mixed Media portrait of a young woman named Zoey

I am mostly happy with this picture but I wish it was more than just a face.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work. Thanks for taking the time to look. Please take a moment and visit my online art store to purchase my work.

To see basic pricing on this piece click here.

Adron 

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Modern style portrait of woman.

This is a portrait I did in watercolor and acrylic of a young woman. It was inspired by a woman on the beach. I wanted to use a lot of colors and to keep things modern. The black and the white is acrylic.

It is painted on watercolor paper with Windsor Newton mediums. I used only three small brushes.

Portrait of a Young Woman in Mixed Media

I worked on it a lot longer than I wanted and like usual the concept was nothing like my finished project. I did not want to do something this representational but was hoping for more abstract with the face being an element but not the focus. I wanted to use the black as an accent but got a little involved with it and it became a secondary subject. The background was too bright and too sharp, so I gave the background a watery wash with black acrylic to dull it down and that gave the face and hair areas bright contrast.

I was trying to show the black coming in at one side and leaving the other.

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

Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Modern Style Portrait Of A Woman In A Black Hat.

This is a mixed media portrait I did of a woman wearing a black hat. I painted it on watercolor paper using watercolor, acrylic, markers, and gesso.

I started with several sketches and then splashed a lot of blue and violet watercolor on the paper. After that dried I began to use markers to start the details. I developed the face with acrylic paint. I try to not use black but lately I have been a little enthralled with the possibilities of its effect on a colorful picture.  I was afraid that I would get carried away but I managed to hold back a little. I used gesso both white and black to tone the colors down.

I found myself working over different places several times to get it right; which is something I do not like to do in watercolor since the colors bleed into each other, but it worked out beautifully.

At first, I was going to leave the hair white but the picture needed more color so I went with the model's hair color, but not in total since I was not really trying to do a portrait but art. If you want the picture to look like the subject then you should take a photo but I wanted to do something more.

I had a lot of fun painting this and hope you enjoy looking at it.

Mixed Media Portrait Of A Young Woman

To see this at my online art store and get pricing for a print or stretched canvas CLICK HERE.

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


 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.


 Use the buttons below to share this with your social networks.

Mixed Media Portrait Face of Young Man Named Shawn

This is a picture of a young man's face that was drawn in pencil on water color paper that was splattered wit browns reds oranges and yellows. I traced the face with a water based ink marker which were washed with clear water to soften the effects.The details were redrawn drawn with black gesso and white gesso. The final touches were with acrylic paint.

Mixed Media Portrait of a Young Man

It is nice and a little more developed than I had hoped since I was aiming for something a little more suggestive and abstract.

This is available to purchase as a print, framed art, and stretched canvas click here to view the options.

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

 Click on an image in the sidebar to see more favorites.

(c) Adron