First off, happy August! Can’t believe how far into the year we are already. This also means that I will be in Greece for three more weeks. I can’t believe I’ve been here two months already. Boy does time REALLY fly.
Onto the topic of the post…so, my aunt owns a textile shop here in Athens, but is not only limited to working with textiles. She does murals, displays, portraits, etc. I may or may not have gotten my artistic genes from her. Anyway, my aunt recently took a job with a client to make her curtains and pillows but along the way, the conversation became about art and all of a sudden I was assigned a job to do portraits by the client’s brother. He wanted a portrait of his daughters. This discussion was weeks ago, but because of the economic crisis here, the project was delayed.
Eventually as the banks started opening and people had more access to their money, the job came around and I was given the photo, measurements, and supplies. I started on Sunday and finished a few days ago. All done with colored pencils, my favorite medium.
I don’t work the conventional way, or even a logical way. I get impatient pretty quick, or maybe I’m anxious to get to the coloring.
I drew one sister and started coloring immediately, but I did have a basic layout of how the other sister would be so that way I wouldn’t regret the decision of placement if I royally screwed up. I have a method that works with me. I had professors scold me for working this way.
Aside from that, I want to share that yes I do tend to use pretty much all colors in my box. I use the whole rainbow. It’s not intentional, but it always turns out that way. I find that the longer you stare at a photo, you can start to see different colors that you wouldn’t expect. It’s in the details. Besides, the body does consist of different colors which you can really spot in shadows. You can see the color under our skin that gives us rose cheeks or deep set eyes. Aside from our natural colors, our surroundings bounce colors off each other which is visible. Stand next to a blue wall and look at your skin and clothes.
So for all you that tend to only use peach, brown, white, and black, I recommend you take a deep look and find all the other colors. They’re there. You just have to use your eyes. (This was sparked by a conversation I had while working on this because it was found “strange” I was coloring blue in the face…hardy har.)
This is a color lesson 101 by Maria.
I find working on portraits of this size with just pencils is kinda soul sucking, but I make it work every time. I was just happy to finish this in under a week. If it was any longer I think I would have poked my eyes out with my “light orange” pencil since it seems to be the longest. It would do most damage.
At least I can say this trip has been an artistic one for sure.
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