Painting

As the pencil sketching portion of my passion project is finished, I will be moving on to a new art type. So for my next art "unit" I will be focusing on painting. Probably watercolour, and maybe some other types as well if I have the time for it.

I have done some painting in the past, but usually I try to avoid it. I am not very comfortable with it at all, probably because I simply never do it. See, with sketching and pencil work you have a lot of control over what the finished product will turn out like. Its usually pretty easy to make your sketches have the type of pencil strokes you want, and you can always use an eraser if you make a mistake or want to do something over. With paint its not that easy, at least not for me. Especially with watercolour, the end result will rarely be as you expected. Its also a lot harder to control and you can't exactly use an eraser! :)

So I will soon be starting on some paintings for this portion of my blog, and I hope that they will turn out how I would like them to. But even if they don't, I suppose that I will learn from my mistakes and improve all the same!

Progress!

Here is another one of my completed portraits. This one is of my lovely sister Nicole, from a picture that I took  of her when she was 11. I am quite happy with the way that this picture turned out, and I was super exited to try out my new sketching pencils!

I have actually drawn this picture twice, the one above is the latest one that I have just finished. The first one that I did I drew almost 2 years ago. I sketched this picture again mainly because I wanted to see how I have improved in my sketching, and how much progress I have made. A big part of a passion project is measuring your progress, and sometimes this can be a little difficult with art, so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to see how far I have come.

Here are the two sketches. The one on the left is the one that I drew almost 2 years ago, and the drawing on the right is the most recent one. Its safe to say that I was pretty pleased with myself and pleasantly surprised when I first compared them. The second picture is noticeably better than the first, and I have gotten more comfortable with shading and adding darkness and shadows to my sketches. The second one is also a much more recognisable picture of Nicole, and I can see that my techniques have also improved!

Another portrait

This is another one of the portraits that I have been drawing, and it is the first sketch of someone that I, and possibly some of you reading this, know. It is a sketch of my lovely sister Kyra.

I was pretty happy with the way that this sketch turned out, although there are definitely some things that I have to work on with my future sketches. I used a normal "school pencil" and as you can see, the pencil strokes are very noticeable. I was having a hard time making them even, but hopefully with practise I will be able to eventually improve and make the strokes less noticeable. I am still trying to stay away from smudging my drawings ( though in this one I was very tempted!) :)
I also had a little trouble drawing the mouth, and those of you who know Kyra might notice that that part of the drawing may be a little off. And as for drawing the hair, I have decided that I might need a little more practise with that.
I recently got a pack of sketching pencils which include both light and dark pencils, so I am planning to play around with those and hopefully they might be easier to use for shading and such.

Sketching faces

These are the sketches that I started with, and I am pretty happy with the way that they turned out. I got the origional sketches off of Pinterest, so I don't actually know the people in the pictures.

I did these first drawings off of sketches already done by other people, because I figured that it would be easier to learn that way. By doing this, I could see the pencil strokes and the techniques of others and learn from them, so I could later use those techniques for my own pictures! Also, if I start by drawing pictures of people that I don't know, then if I make a mistake or change their appearances accidentally, then no one will notice. Since I am just starting, this way I will not be pressured to make the sketches look perfect and I can just use them for practise. Hopefully that makes sense!
I have already started on some sketches of people that I know, and I have finished one of my sister, Kyra, that I will be posting soon!