Show Your Face in the Style of ...

...an established artist.

That is the "challenge" over at lovely Kim Dellow's "Show Your Face" community event for November.

And this is my share for starters: 

When I think about painted faces the portraits by Amedeo Modigliani are the first ones that come to my mind in the very first place. I love how simple his portraits look and yet he has managed to capture a very intimate moment where the portrayed person's face allows us to take a look behind the facade and reveals something deeply intimate or even the persons' very natures.

For some examples that have especially impressed me click HERE or HERE.

Being way too over-focussed on a natural look with my drawings or paintings I challenged myself this time to try and follow Modigliani's way of elongating the faces' proportions (but still let them feel quite natural and touching instead of artificial).

I also love his way of applying the paint to the canvas...but as it is one step at a time when trying something new, I decided to just focus on this one aspect for a start.

I needed a photograph with a person whose facial expression was somehow special, meaningful, touching...and I found a picture of a guy in a home decor magazine who is at work in his pottery studio and obviously loving what he does. So my aim was to try capture the wonderful expression on his face - as this is what makes Modigliani's portraits so wonderful to me.

 I used a (very) small canvas for my experiment and made a rough and quick sketch with a soft pencil first.
 

Then I went in with a fine tip brush and did the black lines first. I knew that some would get lost during the painting process anyway so I didn't spend too much time on being very precise with that step.

Next I started to build up layers of paint, trying to use colour tones close to the ones Modigliani used with his portraits.

As you can see I didn't stick to the colours of the photograph. I focussed on the face and on trying to let go of my usual over-accurateness that most of the time "kills" my paintings or drawings. I think I could have been even more brave with elongating the proportions....but hey - maybe a second try will get me (and the portrait) closer to that Modigliani feel. ;)

I am super curious about the other faces that will be shared over at Kim's place this time!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia x

Show Your Face - Grumpy Scientist

Just a short post today, sharing my "grumpy scientist" drawing with lovely Kim Dellow's "Show Your Face" community!

He was done freehand with a brush tip black Faber Castell PITT artist pen. I hope you like him. Well, not him exactly...but the drawing..lol.


If you haven't checked it out yet, just visit her blog to find out more and see loads of awesome artful faces and inspiration done by gifted bloggers!

Hugs and have a lovely weekend!

xxx

More Faces

Now that I have found a great way that works perfectly for me when it comes to doing portraits I can't stop (not sure though if you can really say something like that after two portraits...lol).

So here she comes:

I have again first roughly sketched the shades with a soft brush and walnut ink solution before I went in with a brown colour pencil and then finished it with a dark brown brush tip Faber Castell PITT artist pen.

I have taken steps images to show the process.

First positioning of the shady areas, lips and eyes. 

 Drawing with the brown colour pencil.

Shading in the hair.

Adding some walnut ink stains and doing some small corrections with white Gesso.

If you haven't seen Kim Dellow's fab "Show Your Face" community where everyone is free to join in and get inspired and/or share his own painted, drawn,...mixed media faces, I highly recommend you check it out. 

It is really fascinating seeing all the different inspired approaches to portraying!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx