Squirrel experiments

I’m not strictly following Ahmed Aldoori’s Pinterest board because in order to practice the advice given in the third video of Portrait Basics with Yong Chen I needed faces that were not tilting up or down. I used some from Aldori’s board some random from Pinterest. Here are the results.

Another copy from Civardi’s book.

This summer I attempted following Mary Sanche’s Youtube tutorial: Quick Landscape Painting Techniques for Beginners. Unfortunately, it was too hot for watercolours. Everything dried so fast.  So, I decided to try again. These are the results. 

In the first row are summer attempts, in the second row are autumn attempts. They were done on Fabriano watercolour paper 25% cotton, 300g/m2, cold press. 

Another set of thumbnails. I must admit that I’m getting more comfortable doing them although sometimes I wonder does all this makes sense.

Here are more studies. Unfortunately I forgot to pin the pictures I used :(

I was lazy in posting but I've been continuing with ‘Framed ink’ .. so here are more thumbnails. There aren’t spectacular but I feel more comfortable in doing them - unfinished, trying to put gist of an idea ..

I started reading Marcos Mateu-Mestre’s ‘Framed ink’. This isn’t my start with this book but I never past chapter two. Not that book is bad - it was combination of other things that pulled me and I knew I need to do stuff, not just read and I was avoiding that :) So, what’s changed this time? My friend Ita is giving me homework for each chapter :) She is real boss if you don’t follow (her) rules and she is great in finding ways to practice :) So here is my first homework based on chapter two. 

Here is a new study based on this picture. I’m still too heavy on pencil when it comes to sketching :(

New heads on display :) I’m getting more comfortable in positioning heads so I think that I’m ready for next video. Here are heads #9 - #16.

Here are two new studies. They are based on this and this picture. It looks like it’s a church day.  As always here are the sketches

What I realise is that I still go heavy with the pencil even in the early stages so that is something that I will try and correct in future studies. Also, I need to pay attention to the proportions - this is more than obvious in the second sketch.

I tried two different mediums - fineliner and color pencil. With fineliner sketch looks cleaner. The second picture was more demanding.

I made another tonal study. I used this picture. This time I didn’t use brush pen, I used pencil and done some hatching.

I’m back with positioning the heads. Here are heads 003 - 008:

I did more studies/copying from Civardi’s ‘Drawing Light & Shade’. I’m not satisfied. These were meant to be ‘easy’. My spheres are far from good; there is no nice transition/gradation. The rest is ok in my humble opinion.  Another thing that I noticed is that my hatching also needs practice. So here is today’s practice:

I tried few portraits in my life and they weren’t good. I heard about Ahmed Aldoori’s #100HeadsChallenge and watch many people on YouTube who invested effort in doing it. Since I can’t do a decent portrait, yet alone do 100 heads in 10 days I decide to do it in my own way.  I will use Aldoori’s Pinterest board but my learning will follow Portrait Basics with Yong Chen lessons. My plan is to do every step (lesson) 100 times. For the first round I will combine lesson one and two.  Here are first two heads.