Tag: woman

Portrait painting

Picking up paints again after a very long hiatus. I can’t say it feels like returning to an old friend. Painting always seems like a fencing duel to me – one in which you never quite know the rules. This study is just a progression from doing a lot of pencil portraits. I’m just trying to get better at drawing faces.

Painting like this is completely different to drawing. It feels alien, but my new found portrait/face study knowledge helped me get a result I’m reasonably happy with.

I think about the above a lot when painting. I was never taught to paint, but surrounded by many people who learned it academically. This always makes me feel like an outsider, or that I’m doing it wrong.

All I know is it’s just a journey and you have to ignore the doubt. Just listen to your own inner voice and follow that.

by Nathan Categories: ArtworkTags: , , , , ,

Diane

This was a challenge. It’s hard enough drawing friends, but drawing a friend when asked by her partner of many years – knowing exactly how her smile looks and squint of the eyes, every facial expression. How does one capture all of that faithfully?

Pencil and conté crayon on paper.

by Nathan Categories: ArtworkTags: , , , , , ,

Portrait of actress Ida Gyllensten

Being a fan of 50s/60s kitsch art, have been playing with a contemporary way to create this type of art featuring modern iconic people. Some famous, some not. This is Ida Gyllensten, actress and singer. Drawn in pencil and crayon.

Ida is a friend from wild days in London in the mid-noughties.

Ida is a phenomenal actress. The Guardian said of Ida’s Magdalena in Scandi Noir ‘End of Summer’:

Magdalena is overly protective of her youngest son and cruelly dismisses her daughter. Some of those flashback scenes are beautifully dream-like, before they dissolve into nightmares.

It’s currently on BBC iPlayer.

https://idagyllensten.se/english

https://dreamingofislands1.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-of-islands

by Nathan Categories: Artwork, CommissionTags: , , , , , , ,

Lana Del Ray

Being a fan of 50s/60s kitsch art, have been playing with a contemporary way to create this type of art featuring modern iconic people. Some famous, some not. More to come.

Drawn in pencil and crayon.

by Nathan Categories: ArtworkTags: , , , , , , ,

Life Drawing

I love painting, but I’ve never felt natural at it. It makes me feel like I’m swimming with flippers and a snorkel on (and likely taking in water). Give me a pencil, Biro or twig for that matter and it’s easy to draw as breathing – just feels natural to me.

My absolute favourite way of drawing is like this, on coloured paper with a simple black and white pencil. This one has a little medium terracotta chinagraph for warmth.

Inspired by modernist sculpture – especially art deco statures from the 1920s. I saw a load recently in an antique market. It just shows how just looking at things can inspire you without you realising.

by Nathan Categories: ArtworkTags: , , ,

Hayley Atwell portrait

I’ve used photos as reference, obviously – I don’t have Hayley Atwell on speed dial.

I’ve been finding my portrait drawings not being as good as I want. It’s good to practice things like hands too, but I’m going back to basics with faces and heads. I’ve been studying how favourite artists approach the head. This includes Loomis method – an idealised way used for commercial and comic art. It’s quite magical following this method and seeing pretty accurate 3D heads and faces appear very quickly. Even better, it can be used for real people, to set up a life drawing or portrait sitting quickly and getting a face likeness.

Anyway, I realised I don’t have a systematic way to do portraits and generally just battle with the paint until the face looks OK. Starting fresh, I’m learning about approaches to structure, and in this example, working skin tones. It’s not my best portrait, but I was mainly following a skin tones technique tutorial. I find it useful to practice from well known people as you can find a range of images from different angles to help with understanding the 3D aspects of the face. This is ALWAYS second best to a real life sitting, but good enough for practice.

by Nathan Categories: ArtworkTags: , , , , ,