Paints And Graphites

Ler’s art blog

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A collection of 3h portraits from newest to oldest I did. Slowly breaking through a comfortable color scheme.

Can you believe all of these were painted with 5 colors each?

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Eugenia, oil on canvas, 6h

As promised, the painted portrait. I think it’s the first time I actually painted (faux) fur?

Trying to move to a more juicy thicker painting technique, as opposed to my thinner layering style.

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Eugenia, 6h, charcoal pencil, chalk pencil, craft paper.

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Vika, soft material (brown soft pastel) on toned paper, 12h

I rarely work in this technique, especially for a long study. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it - it just takes a lot of prep in terms of finding a good paper/material combo, and finding pastel stick and pencil that match in hue (I think this one is Cretacolor stick and Derwent pencil, but I’m not sure). I don’t think this paper worked too well - I would have preferred something with smoother blending (no special blenders, we smudge with fingers like men).

Still, good experience. I think the next one would be mid-toned paper+charcoal+white pencil (chalk? pastel? Idk, will need to do some trials), so I’m excited.

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Katy’s, 9h.

Sometimes I surprise myself. This had such a pre-raphaelite feeling to it, I loved it.

Though as much as I love this model, It’s the third study I finished of her, and I wish we get someone new starting January.

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I was on my way home and saw these guys - and they slayed.

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Vika, 12h

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Once again Katya, 6h. Due to light change, we had to turn on the day lamps and they are meh and make everything look yellow, as you can see on the second photo. Daylight saves the day, again.

All things considered, this is not bad for something that is a mix’n’match of two different light settings.

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6 h, oil on canvas. Honestly don’t remember the model’s name, but I think I stepped up my portrait game.

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Katya, 3h, pencil on paper

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Katya, approx 12h. In an inexplicable turn of events, this piece decided to photograph properly. Which is a good thing, because I absolutely adored this model, and the piece turned out so well. She has a beautiful delicate bone structure, but at same time, such baby-doll features. This is not perfect, but this is probably as good as I can get at the moment. (Despite my mentor’s joke that it could do with 6 more hours - hahaha no.)

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Lena, the portrait of a painter painting, 4h. I had no idea I was going to do this today, but it happened, and I love it. Basically, I would draw anyone just not to draw any bouquets. The main challenge was to actually do a portrait of someone who is constantly moving. Also, first time using the Berlin Lazuri. I had my reservations, but Oh My, did it work like a charm. The universal truth, my dudes, is that 50% of a painting is finding the right Big Three, and ayyy, I’m getting really good at that.

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Kira, 6h. It feels strangely new in technique for me. Hand fragment, 9h. The hand WAS the focus of this, but granted that the model is a living and breathing person, it’s pretty hard to get her to put her hand in an exact position, so half of this is from imagination. This a really weird piece, but parts of it are fantastic and it’s good enough. And yeah, I know, I’ve heard all the jokes about erotic academism under the sun.

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Kira - oil on canvas, 6h.

The main take-away from this study that I had was that I need to start painting with juicer fatter strokes - blending is nice and all, but it’s starting to lack a certain something. I would say texture? And as much a porcelain complexion and smooth plane transitions are characteristic to this model, it would bring back some life.

On the other note, Kira looks like a girl from some socialist realism painting and I love it?

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A quick - 6h - portrait in soft material (sepia pastel on pastel paper) that I did as a final piece with Dmitrii. It’s more free-hand, since I wasn’t allowed to “construct” the shapes. I would say the biggest challenge was to make materials work together, in particular - to make this particular type and brand of pastel to layer properly on this paper. I blended with both the blending tool, which was a lot better for highlighting the planes of the face, and my fingers, which created a softer wispiness to the tone. You can see that there are attempts at etching in the neck area, which was a failed experiment because the stokes were too rough. The main takeaway is that sometimes the material just has a life of its own, so better let it do its thing and have fun with the process, but next time, you choose things that are better suited for your needs. In my case, it would probably be hard pastels. The other are MORE full body sketches, and I like only the middle one, because it’s pretty clear that I was getting tired and the form does whatever.

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Three sketches of Dmitrii I did today. 40 min each. I like the middle one the best.

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Finally finished it. Never doing a natural backlighting with white cold interior light ever again. 15 hours? 20? Kinda lost count. Oil on canvas. As always, looks better in natural light.