Greg by Yevgenia Watts in Southern California.
I’m working very hard now on getting better with drawing portraits. I’ve taken a short watercolor break in favor of getting back to basics with drawing portraits with pencil. I’ve never had any traditional training or taken any art classes so my best resources currently are this archive and the rest of the Web at large.
While looking for portrait inspirations I ran across this piece by Watts via the most-excellent Flickr group called Julia Kay’s Portrait Party. This Flickr group is dedicated to portraits from the members of the group and of the members of the group. It is a fascinating activity to watch and I hope to one day join – but I’ve got a long way to go.
This piece by Watts is just great. If you look at the reference photo and compare the piece you’ll see just how great it really is. Under scrutiny the brushstrokes used by Watts shouldn’t really work. They seem relatively haphazard and yet, they work beautifully to convey texture, shadow, light. Blues and reds instead of blacks and browns. Someday, someday I will be able to do something even remotely as awesome as this. Until then, I’ll pick up my pencil every day and try.