Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Shading and Simple Portraits from my Faces 101 Class

Some of you may have read THIS post where I told you about signing up to take an awesome art class called "Faces 101" by Carla Sonheim.  Let me tell you, I am having all kinds of creative fun while being challenged.
So far I have used pencil, sharpie pens, watercolors, ink with a eye dropper, pastels, and water soluble crayons to create FACES. Many faces. It has been such a fun process and I forgot how much in particular I love to paint. Especially water color.

Here are just a couple of examples of some of the art work I have been creating (more to come later):
In this "warm up" exercise we had to look at the drawing on the left and then recreate it on the right really focusing on shading. We weren't necessarily supposed to focus on getting the drawing perfectly realistic, more focusing on looking at all of the variations of shades and lines on the face.

Illustration copyright: Shauna Passic Williams, Please do not copy image. All Rights Reserved.

For this fun little watercolor exercise we had to start of by mixing different pigments for skin color with watercolors and dab basic shapes on our paper. Then we loosely added simple shapes for the hair. Once the portraits dried, we went back in and added simple details with loose pencil lines.

This was a lot of fun, because normally I would have sketched out my portrait first, stressing about getting it perfect, then I would have painted it. Instead I focused on the shape first and went back and added a couple of details.


Carla's "Faces 101" class is so much fun and I highly recommend taking it on a future date. There are both very beginner drawers to professional artist's taking the class. So, there is a place for everyone.

More drawings (I am saving one of my favorites) and new snowman activities along with a couple free printables to come this week.  

2 comments :

Emma's Lunch said...

Wow! I love how your faces came out, they are so artistic and great looking! I love the idea of adding blobs of color and then creating the details... Lovely!

Vanja
Emma's Lunch

Lindsey & Kurtis said...

These are awesome! You are so talented. I'm so proud of you for doing something you love. Good for you! Hope I get to see them in person. :)