Janet's Nova Scotia Tolling Retrievers

When my email friend Janet sent me this photo I begged her to let me paint it. I started it last November. Life got in the way along with all the bustle of the Season. I finally got it finished last week.

I hope now that it is a new year I will have more time to paint.

This one is a combo of watercolor under painting for the back ground and wood. The dogs are all colored pencil. And the detail of the wood is CP.

No time for CPs in October.

Whew! I apologize to my September portrait students for not getting this done sooner. October was a busy month and I didn't get time to pick up a single CP! We had two trips and put over 3000 miles on the car. I also had a big woodworking project to get done.

So at long last here it is. Tao's finished portrait. If you scroll down to my Sept. 27 entry you can see where I left off on this. All that was left was rendering the forehead and adjusting the face.

Getting the forehead as dark as needed on the left side is scary. I had to keep using my value finder to check for adequate dark value. In order for the brown to not look muddy I had to bring up the color with Pink and Henna to keep it looking warm and real. You can see this is the progress photo. If you go to the darker hues before bringing up the value and getting the colors fairly bright the darker shades look dull and dry. I took Tao's forehead all the way up the skin value range to the darkest ones including Tuscan Red and Dark Umber. I blended it with Goldenrod and Pink to warm it up again. The only place I didn't bring the value up so high was on his chin where I wanted to indicate his beard and have it look scumbly and beardy ;O).

September Class is over :O(

We had a great time in class again this time. Many of the students want to continue to learn more about CP so I have decided to hold an Open Studio Day once a month.

It will be in be in Lexington at my home. The first one will be Tuesday November 11 at 10 AM. Charge is $20 for the day. The class will be 3-4 hours. All are welcome to bring a brown bag lunch. Students will work on colored pencil projects of their own choosing. For those having trouble picking a project or beginners please consider one of Ann Kullberg's CP kits: www.annkullberg.com

This open studio day is available to those who have had CP classes in the past as well as those learning about CP for the first time. The class is filling fast. There is room for only about nine people. To reserve a spot drop me an email gretchenparker@earthlink.net

Yorkie lesson

Here's our project for today. The progress photos are below this reference photo.

We did a water color underpainting in class today to chop away at the sections of hair.

Photo 1: The eyes have been washed with Light Umber and I have placed the pupils. I also impressed little dots to the left of the pupils to indicate the high light. It probably will not show up on these photos.

The nose has been washed in Clay Rose, 20% Cool Grey and Dark Brown. Before I laid in these colors I impressed all those little hairs around the edge of the nose. The nostrils have been burnished black but I saved that little highlight around the bottom edge of the nostril.

Photo 2: The eyes have been colored with 70% Cool Grey then burnished with 10% Cool Grey to indicate the reflected light. The edges of the eyes were darkened with Dark Umber and then deepened more with Black. Before I did that I impressed a line in the white of the paper to save that highlighted eye rim on the right.

The nose has all been covered with 70% Cool Grey then the shadow area was pushed back with Black along the upper left. The front of the nose was blended with Rosey Beige and the nostrils were highlighted around the edges with it as well.

Photo 3: I just had to put the hair in around the eyes. I inscribed tiny lines along the edge of that light area between the eyes. Then I did negative drawing with dark brown around the feathery hairs in that light area to set it off. I filled my left hand with Jasmine, Burnt Ochre, Terra Cotta, Peach, Tuscan Red, Light Umber, Dark Umber and Black and just attacked the area blending the darker colors along the edges of the areas and the lighter colors in the lighter more highlighted areas.

Last I used very sharp French Greys in the area between the eyes and used short directional strokes to put in that fuzzy little area. I left a lot of my under painting showing to indicate the lighter hairs.

Nose Demo

This face is coming right along nicely. See the photos below.

It's time to start lifting the nose up off the paper. It is done by shading the sides of the nose and paying attention to the highlights along the bridge and around the nostrils.

As I began the nose I noticed his eyes didn't look quite right. I got out my mylar sheet and sure enough the fold above the eye on the right was turned wrong. You can see the correction by comparing the second photo with the third.

Once the eye was right I used Peach to begin pushing up the side of the nose. I felt like I needed to "anchor" the nose so I started the cheek on the shadow side of the face. I slowly built up the cheek color by using at least one color from each skin tone level working up the value scale all the way to level six which includes Dark Umber and Tuscan red. As I worked the cheek I worked the value level of the nose along with it. To develop the cast shadow on the cheek along the edge of the nose I had to go to black because that side of the face is in such deep shadow. I rarely go that dark in a portrait.

I used my mylar sheet to check the shape of the nostrils. Though they are tiny but they must be the right shape to make the nose look right.

It's important to save the little white highlights on the nose tip by working color around them. Those highlights help move the nose tip forward and give depth to the face. The nose tip generally tends to be shaped like a partial ball and should be shaded like the ones all artists practice when first learning to render a sphere. The nose bridge should be thought of as a cylinder and shaded much like those cylinder lessons we all did when we were learning to draw.

You can see in the last photo how the nose curves and turns as the shading is developed. Apply the lessons you learned in rending curved surfaces when you first learned to draw. The important thing to remember is that color does not matter nearly as much as value. If you have the value level right the color choice is secondary. The secret is to work in light color washes if you need to adjust the color you can easily do it.

The Mouth

Class moved on to the mouth yesterday. A closed mouth smile is of course the easiest to render. If teeth are showing it's best to not draw the teeth but draw the spaces around them. They tend to look less like Chickletts!! Also if you are rendering teeth really look at their color. They are never stark white. You will often see Cream or a mauve or even some blue but never all white. There may be a tiny white highlight where the light catches here and there.

While rendering the lips shown here I discovered Prismacolor's new colors Chestnut 1081 and Mahogany Red 1029 work really well for the colors I need on this dark face. I used them to map out the shapes in the lips.

Next I used Peach to start mapping out the shapes around the lips. Henna was used to continue rendering the lips and adding the shape of the lips.

In the fourth photo I have used Tuscan read and Dark Umber to fully deepen the shadows between the lips and at the corners. Little spots of black have been added to the darkest most deep set areas. The color of the lips was then blended with Rosey Beige and Pink Rose.

To anchor the lips I have completed the shadows around the mouth moving up the value scale to Dark Umber, blending it all with Beige. See the last photo.

As with the eyes, later I will adjust and deepen all these colors as I complete the rest of the portrait.

The Mouth