meldrum art
One of my many New Year Resolutions was to improve my figures in my watercolour paintings. We all basically always look at the head first and so it’s not very good if the face feels amateurish. This is why I am going to portrait classes every Tuesday now, I wan’t to improve and I don’t want my paintings to look amateurish!!!!!!! 🙂
These watercolours are about A5 in size.
I was very ill last week and I’m still recovering. The most frustrating thing about not being well is the inability to paint. It was a wonderful feeling therefore to do some portrait practice yesterday evening, it means I am feeling better and soon everything will be back to normal.
This young girl uploaded her pouting face onto Sktchy App which is a great photo resource for portrait artists, the only negative is that everyone seems to pout their lips when they take selfies of themselves. A sign of the times.
Saunders Waterford Sketchbook, 28 X 38 cm
I continue to practice painting watercolour portraits. Like I said before I use Sktchy App (iPhone only) for my model source. Even though there is a lot of faults with this I am quite happy with it. It’s a journey, like everything else it takes time to become accomplised at anything and watercolour is a difficult technique so it’s gonna take a while before I can fell comfortable doing portraits. Please do not ask me to do a portrait, it would just stress me out. Ask next year maybe! 🙂
Size: 31 x 41 cm on Fabriano paper.
Yes, I am having fun practising my portraits, the reason for this is I can see a large improvement every time I paint a new one. I have been using portrait images downloaded from Sktchy App (iPhone) which is great for artists and self-obsessed selfie users who want a free portrait of themselves.
Painted on Saunders Waterford 26 x 36 cm
Click image below for full-sized watercolour.
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I painted a portrait last weekend and it wasn’t very good. I needed to practice. A friend of mine tipped me about an app for the iPhone called Sktchy. People upload there selfie portraits and artists paint them if they find them interesting. It’s a great copyright free resource for artists. I used the app for the first time yesterday. I have no idea who the dude is.
Arches 27 x 37 cm
This is a portrait of Swedish trotting catch driver called Björn Goop. I used a grid to help me get the proportions correct. It was really easy to draw his likeness in this manner, it almost felt like cheating! 😉
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| Björn Goop grid |
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| Björn Goop |
I look at my portrait of Anders Zorn and wish I spent more time trying to capture his likeness. At the same time I am happy with the painting. I completed it during two of my lunch breaks. The clock was against me, it wasn’t perfect from the start but I pushed on regardless, my goal was to paint and learn, which I did.
Life drawing has thought me not to get hung up on details, just draw and never pause for thought until the bell goes pling! Some day I will have time to paint and I hope by then I’ll have mastered watercolouring enough to excel at it. Until then, I practice. Time permitting.
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| Anders Zorn |
I was using a mirror for my self-portrait. I discovered that no one I showed it to recognized me. They do not see a mirror image of course. I never thought about it until now, if I ever hang this painting on a wall, it will have to be close to a mirror!
Here you can see the original painting in progress, little did I know at that point that the portrait was flipped and therefore not me.
