Portrait practice

Last week was super busy so I didn’t have an opportunity to do a lot of sketching. But I did manage to fit in a couple of portraits over the last two weekends.

Here’s the portrait I just finished drawing/painting in my watercolour visual diary. It’s of a fellow artist from the Sktchy community.

The inspiration photo hinted that this image showed him in a moment of self-doubt about his art. I really identified with that and wanted to support him. Living a creative life and following dreams is filled with moments of self-doubt and those stories our inner anxiety tells about ourselves.

I think I captured a likeness in this portrait. It’s not exact but I wanted to capture the mood of the post and I think I’ve done that.

I’m pretty happy with this artwork.

The images above are the reference photo, the initial sketch and a progress shot of the portrait as I was moving through the creation phase.

A week ago I chose a young lady who was exploring her creative individuality by dressing up with horns and playing with black eyes. I liked how it had a hint of the paranormal to it. Of course I’d like that since that’s the genre I write in.

I changed the bow in her hair so it reflected the rainbow and entered it into the Sktchy Pride Portrait party. It was a challenge to draw and I’m happy to say that the person I drew really liked the image.

Below is the original reference photo, my initial sketch in graphite and then a progress photo in pen.

On another topic, I’ve been stuck on a particular scene in my novel and have had a lot of trouble pushing through to finish writing the current chapter. But today in a few moments of quiet, I managed to make some progress. It felt so good to finally get through the blockage and see my story develop further.

One more step along the way to completing my novel for the next round of editing.

I hope to be back at life drawing this week, so I may have some more images to share in the coming weeks.

Until then have a great time living a creative life, expressing yourself in the world in your own unique way.