J & C

Time for another wedding portrait! I'm going to submit it to the Provo Homegrown Art exhibit this year. Fingers crossed, yes?

Here's the original. (Aren't they cute!)

Fancy doors drawn mostly to proportion.

Sketch of the couple. I was really preoccupied with the doors because architecture isn't really my thing, so I drew the details in too dark. I came to regret that later. 

Finished drawing. Someday I'll get better at drawing men. But...it is not this day.

Door detail and highlighted color wash.

Door detail.

Coloring in the suit. The picture I was sent was very color corrected, so the suit looked black and didn't have much definition. So I looked at some of their other wedding photos for reference. I didn't realize how off his left leg is until later.

Finished suit. I like the corsage, though it might be too big. I fixed some of the coloring of the suit, too. And I think it looks a bit more realistic.

Skin tones. I know it looks super creepy right now, but not every in-between stage is beautiful. (That sounds like a life lesson.) I was pretty concerned at this point because the skin looked too yellowish.

I did a light red wash over their skin to make it less yellow. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm pretty happy with the facial details as well (except for his eyebrows). 

I did another, darker wash on the door to help fix the yellowy tone. Base layer on the hair.
It's usually at about this point that I realize just how beautiful the bride is, after being able to capture some of it on paper. Also, one of the hardest things about painting a wedding scene in watercolor is that there is so much white! And in watercolor, if you want something to be white, you leave it blank and let the paper show through. But when it's a temple or the whole dress, you have to add some gray shading to make it look real. I'm pretty pleased with how this one worked out.

Some additional work and detail on the veil, which I'm so proud of. Also some shading for his shirt. 

The setup.

Finishing touches with the white gel pen. Also, I listened to Ed Sheeran's newest album while I finished. It's a wonderful album. 

Final. I made his leg a little thicker so his hand could feasibly be in his pocket and then evened out his ears a bit. I framed it and am keeping it around the house for now. It's kind of nice—I usually give the painting away right after I finish it, and I like being able to enjoy my own work for a bit. 

Anyway, I finished it too late for her birthday but fairly early for their April 2nd anniversary. But if the Homegrown Art Show accepts it, then the couple won't get it until May. 

Puppy Portrait

Melissa is one of my oldest friends, and she adopted a dog two years ago. I offered to paint a puppy portrait for her for Christmas. 

Here's the original. I'm going to change the colors on things with really crazy patterns because, well—those are hard to paint.

 Original sketch. The proportions worked pretty well, though I'm not very well versed with animals.

Good progress, but it looks like Christmas puked on that paper towel. 

Not promising. Almost quit. But Eliza kept me going on. 

A little simplification goes a long way.

Adding some fur. 

I don't know much about animal faces, but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. 

Simplifying the bandanna worked great, but the words don't look too realistic.

Final(ish) product. I'm happy with how it worked out. And Bear liked it so much that he licked it through the plastic. 

M&A Anniversary

 So I had the chance to do a wedding portrait for my cousin's anniversary! (On a bit of an expedited timeline, which was a fun challenge. I drew it on one Sunday afternoon and painted it on another.)

Original photo

Initial drawing

Completed drawing

Initial color blocking for the suit

Thinking *I'll just do her hair while I'm using black...*
Which was a terrible idea, because then I had to avoid getting the black everywhere as I filled in the rest of the painting.

Background and boutonniere 

Showing some skin. (It was pretty yellowy for a moment there; I'm happy with the pinker shade I managed with a careful wash.)

M's face

Hand and dress details. (The original photo doesn't show the rest of the dress on the right, so I had to improvise—not my forte.)

Facial details and hair work. I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

Background details

Detail work with a white gel pen (the single greatest innovation in modern watercolor)

Original photo

Watercolor final

I'm really pleased with all the facial details and how the hair turned out. I didn't quite get the proportions right on A's face, the hand is probably too small, and I didn't quite capture M's smile and eye contact with the camera—so there's always room for improvement. I'm very happy with how it turned out overall, especially considering that it didn't take as much time as most of my previous works. 

One of my favorite things about doing portraits of friends and family members is that I feel like I know the person better after staring at them for several hours. As I reproduce their faces, I'm struck by how beautiful they are. And I know I'll never look at them quite the same again. 

Coronavirus Crafts: J at the temple

So I let J choose, between two pictures, what I would paint for her birthday. She chose the one of K and J splashing in puddles. This was the other option. And Aria stood by her 3-year-old's choice, but we both knew that Aria wanted to see this one in watercolor. Well, it just so happens that Mother's Day isn't that far away from J's birthday, so I just did both. 

Happy Mother's Day, Aria!

I did not expect the temple to be so hard to draw! I guess I don't have a lot of experience drawing architecture, and somehow doing it at a slight angle is infinitely more difficult than doing it straight on. But I think it came together pretty well.  

Does the quality of the watercolor paint have something to do with the vibrancy of the color? The slightly higher-quality set I got when I was 12  (or maybe 14) is essentially dried out at this point, though I can still use some of it. (That's the magic of watercolor.) The new set I have was much cheaper and lower quality and I've noticed naturally brighter hues. But for a tropical Hawaii scene, bright colors really fit.  

Yellow highlight on the top of the bushes. Darker green detail. 

The sidewalk and her cute little shadow. I felt a lot better about the stairs this time, but maybe that's because there's only really one. 

I was very carefree with the sky. Part of that is because the original photo portrays a fairly washed-out or too-light sky, so I knew it would be up to my artistic interpretation anyway. I liked the thought of capturing movement and change in the sky, since that's what I've usually experienced in Hawaii.

Goodness, these windows were difficult. They had to be very small, very even, and very symmetrical. And they all had to be like that. Even though it's just a handful of rectangles, I think it was the hardest part of painting this piece.

I added the rest of the detail to the temple. I was a little at a loss for how to depict the relief sculpture at the front of the temple. It's too far away to show in great detail, but it still has to look purposeful. So I looked at the relief sculpture and narrowed it down to the most basic shapes: lines, curves, circles, and L-shapes. Then I painted those. 

Also, J looks like a cute little ghost child here.

Skin color is always a bit of a hit or a miss, and there are more highlights and shadows than you'd think. I think this came out fairly well. 

Her dress is mainly pink with some variegated pink-and-orange tulle. I tried to capture that in the little folds of the dress. 

J has lovely blond hair that curls naturally in her humid Hawaiian home. I tried to copy over as much life and spontaneity and color into her hair as possible without making it too dark. 

The letters on the temple were another tricky part. I know that they read "Holiness to the Lord -- The House of the Lord," but the perspective of this painting places the letters too far in the background. The viewer shouldn't be able to read the phrase on the temple. However, the lines should look like the phrase even if they aren't clear enough to really read. So I wrote out the phrase on piece of scrap paper in a larger scale, imagined the essential elements of the letters and word groups, and wrote that. It worked out well, so I added it to the temple. It could probably be centered better, but it's not bad. 

Finished, scanned product.