Color Practice

This week I painted last week's sketch of the second of three heads in the SamDoesArts "Portraits 101" tutorial.

I started this little side quest with another SDA tutorial: "How to RENDER COLOURS!" (Let's go easy on Sam for his misspelling of "colors" here; he's Canadian. The all-caps lettering and exclamation point though? No mercy.)

After that I watched a few more videos of other artists explain shading and picking colors. And I even found a really good video on YouTube about painting my First Nemesis: Hair. While I won't say that I've conquered my First Nemesis, I think I definitely poked it in the eye. Maybe even offered a half-hearted bitch slap. Sigh. Still more ground to cover.

Here is my finished painting (with the original reference screenshot):

Reference Image

My Portrait

Meh, not bad.

I would love to be more accurate with the facial features. And the colors. And, well, everything. That will come with practice.

I really enjoyed mixing the colors! I've enjoyed learning about the way things interact with light and color. I've been obsessed with looking at things such as clouds and trees and picking out the various not-immediately-obvious colors. Take this portrait for example, I didn't notice at first that her hair has saturated purples and burgundies in the shadows. How cool is that!

I'm also starting to get obsessed with the question of what makes a painting more dramatic. And what does that even mean? Apparently, contrast can do it. Using complementary colors can contribute. I tried both here. The reference is in a pretty diffuse light, but I rendered it with a little more contrast. And did I mention the reds in the face and in her hair? Don't forget the beige skin tone. But my shading is all done with a very dark, saturated purple color. I like how it turned out.

Next up, I think I'll try some clouds. Sam made it look easy in his tutorial (though he did say it was difficult to render clouds well). But seriously. How hard could it be? Famous last words...