untamedartists

This is another WIP, 16" x 11", soft pastels on Terra Cotta Colourfix. I'll put up the first three stages and that's where I'm at right now.

Finding the lights


Getting in to some of the darks and establishing the colour scheme


And then throwing in some detail to give me a 'win' so some parts are nearly finished while most of it isn't even started. This is a very poor photo with lots of glare. I'll get better ones in later stages.

Here's a small update before bed with a better photo of it

Well, I've come to the stage where I turn it around for a while to see if it needs any adjustment. Thanks to those who've watched



And a couple of details about one and a half times actual size just to show that it's all fairly straight forward stuff.

Absolutely stunning Patrick! This is even better than your previous efforts! Just mindblowing...

Thanks Leigh. I must admit, I'm really getting into these portraits. Thing is, I've absolutely no interest in doing portraits of stunning looking young people (sorry Rebecca and Bonnie ), it's all about the character lines in the old faces. Maybe they are easier too, but the results are satisfying as well.

I also think a major component is choice of paper colour. If I get that right, it makes the whole process easier and enjoyable. I have got it wrong on a couple of occasions and ended up fighting the painting the whole way through to get a decent result. The Terra Cotta is ideal for the subjects I've been working on, but I also used that for the portrait of Deane, a caucasian, and it was the wrong choice. I think I overcame it but it made me overcompensate at one stage where I got that ghostly look.

Oh, a word on digital images. This guy's right ear (on our left) looks out of place on the digital image. In real life, it looks fine. I'm not sure what happens sometimes when digital images change the nature of some parts of a painting, but it's happened with other things too. I did a coloured gel pen drawing once and my scanner just wouldn't pick up orange, which made the resulting lion look silly since it was predominantly orange

The way you utilized the paper colour here was a masterstroke mate! I just loved that you were able incorporate so much of it into the subject and really make him pop off the background (which is sublime by the way...)

I'm foreseeing you doing a large exhibition in a few years working with the salvos doing a series of portraits like this. Did you ever check out the work of Denis Peterson? I can see your work heading in that direction in terms of emotional impact

I was just going to ask that Patrick...if the color of the face was in fact paper coming through. I think Leigh just answered that question.

Patrick, this is truly stunning. So very well done.

I am the same, if I'm going to work on a person, the wrinklier the better. Give me character, sun damaged, aged and interesting. One of my goals is to do a whole series of interesting faces. I've always wanted to do that, but I never wanted it to be based on other peoples photos...are these all your ref pics from your travels? If so I am extremely envious.

Again, just so well done Mate, really.

Thanks guys

Mitch, all the portraits are my references except this one. This is one I got off SCX and I couldn't go past it.

As to the paper showing through, all the paper is covered with pastel, but the colour of the skin is the same as the colour of the paper, so even though that's the case, I still used a pastel of that colour. That allows me to move the other pastel around a bit more and blend better if the need arises. I would find it too difficult to blend other colours into the terra cotta paper without a base coat on it - if that makes sense.

Got ya Patrick, again, what an excellent result. Would you mind listing the colors you used on this. I really just want to get an idea of pastels.

On our recent trip to Darwin I thought I would get many good pics of the aboriginal people there, but when it came down to it I found I felt it was to disrespectful. How to uproach people was an issue for me. Quite sad, I would love to do a series of portraits based on them.

The portrait I did which is on my WC profile page was a Steve McCurry photo...my hero. Soon after finishing it I bought a book of his work and I was thinking of writing for permission to the publisher to use those photos...can that be done? Does the publisher have a right to give that permission?