Portrait of a lady

Hello! It's been a long while! I actually didn't paint for almost a year, the other painting that my friend comissioned gave me a block, and at spring I had a bad bout of depression.

Anyways, lately I've been learning to draw, especially faces. The goal is to eventually start painting portraits - the principles are the same, after all.

I watched some portrait painting tutorials, and I used a limited palette, Zorn Palette: Titanium White, Ivory Black, Cadmium Res and Yellow Ochre.

The process was quite chaotic, my palette was a mess, and I kinda got in a pickle from the get go - I toned my canvas straight ahead with a mix of Ochre and Cad Red at around the face and with Black around the background - without sketching the face first. Oops! Luckily it wasn't an unsolvable problem, although I needes to flip the face on my tablet. Also the end result doesn't look like the reference at all, but at least it's a human face! 😁

The reference picture I used was of a very fair skinned lady, but since the tutorial I watched started from darkest darks and went lighter from there, my shadow side turned out first waay to dark, enough to be tones of a dark skinned woman. I managed to even out the skin tones somewhat, but the skin looks more of a mediterranean tone than fair tone.

Actually, I cheated a bit: the reference had such strikingly blue eyes, that I decided to use Pthalo Blue for the eyes only.

I'm pretty happy with the end results, although I've lately found better tutorials to portrait paintings. Also I noticed after I was done, that the eyes are a bit crooked, but it's a learning experience.

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