Colored Pencil Portrait Class – Work in Progress #2

“Souzi” – Work in Progress

Copyright 2012, Valerie Jones

 

We were having so much fun in class on Saturday that before we knew it, class time was over.  No one wanted to stop working.

I showed the class how to create eyes.  Eyes really bring a painting to life.  The eyes are where the soul of a person lies. 

Souzi’s eyes are dark, so dark that you can hardly see the pupil.  What make the eyes shine is leaving the white of the paper for the highlight.  If you get the highlight too small, it is extremely difficult to get it back.  So, draw the highlight larger than it really is.  You can always make it smaller later.

The whites of the eyes are never white, so we added some color with Prismacolor French Grey 10%, Warm Grey 20%, Cloud Blue, and Periwinkle.  Why the blues?  The shirt Souzi wore to pose in has blue in it.  The blue was reflecting in the whites of the eyes.

Eyes, black & white

I wanted to make sure I was getting the correct value of color in the skin tones around the eyes.  I converted the color image to black & white and compared it to a black & white image of the original.

Original Photo

I can see that in the darkest shadow in the creases, I hit the mark.  I also see some areas that need adjusting.    I will re-work these areas by adding more dark colors.  I am leaving the eyelashes out until the values around the eyes are correct.

I am so looking forward to class again on Saturday!  We will work on the eyebrows and nose.