Over the last few weeks, I had the chance to work on four portraits for my cousin to give to her parents for Christmas! The portraits are of her four nieces and nephews, my cousins too.
I was so happy to have my daylight lamp that Joseph got me for my birthday this summer!
There is generally only a small window of daylight where I can work on portraits,(one of the reasons it takes so long to finish) depending greatly on the weather and time of year. Winter is generally a dismal time to do such work. But with this lamp, I could still work on overcast days, and even when it started getting dark! It was a great help.
Regular lights are too dim for my eyes, plus they make the colors look wrong on artwork so it's not advisable to work under those conditions.
Here is the first one I completed of "S". The photo was really nice! It had great lighting, the clothing and pose were interesting; I loved it. I hate how my camera doesn't capture the subtlety of colors in colored pencil, but this was the best picture I got. Just believe me that there are lots of colors in her white ruff, and her face. I was sad too when I tried to print out my own copy, the turquoisy blue of her dress didn't translate in the ink colors of my printer. Oh well.
Next is her cousin, M, who has one blue eye and one brown eye! That was kind of cool. His photo looked like it was maybe taken under fluorescent lights, because his face had a yellowish green caste to it; I kept having to remind myself to correct the color and not copy it exactly. Again, there is a lot of color in his face that wasn't captured by the camera!
Here is a close up to show some of the color, though it's still not as bright as real life.
The third drawing of "S"s little brother "W" is on a different kind of paper than the others. When I first started doing these commissioned childrens portraits around 2007, I had this perfect paper. It was a light pink in color, thick and sturdy, and perfectly smooth, which worked great with the way I draw. Eventually, it ran out and I haven't been able to find a similar paper since!
The paper on which I did these other three portraits was the same type of paper I like, except for the color: light blue. It works, but it's not nearly as perfect for skin tones. Anyway, I bought this paper thinking I'd found the perfect thing, but it turned out that it had more texture to it than I first realized.
In this close up, you can see how it has these ridges. Blah. I don't completely hate it, because it made the drawing look almost like it was in pastels, as I couldn't make any hard lines. But yeah, I couldn't make any hard lines. So this is the only one on the pink paper.
This final portrait is also an "M" just like her brother with the mismatched eyes. She was wearing a cute Minnie Mouse outfit in the photo-complete with ears! I decided to leave out the ears (I didn't ask first- maybe I should have. Oh well). This photo was taken on a phone and for some reason my computer couldn't read the file types of all the pictures of this girl, so I had to take screenshots of my email, and print sections of it-it was bigger than the screen.
I think this one turned out technically well, though I worry that it doesn't look completely like the real girl. Hopefully the recipients will think it's perfect.
Here is a comparison of the pink paper to the blue, though the photo doesn't show it as well. Maybe you can see how the skin looks warmer and..pinker on the boy, but the background turned out nicer on the girl's portrait. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't' cover up the ridges of pink for a smooth background.
All in all, I think it's a pretty good set of kids!
