Portrait Practice in Watercolor

Watercolor is such a tricky mistress, she can be well behaved or totally unpredictable; the trick is to learn her ways and try to make the unpredictable predictable and avoid rookie mistakes. For a self taught artist like me, this takes significant amounts of practice and I am up for the challenge!

I scoured the YouTube encyclopedia to get some assistance with technique as I haven’t yet gotten my skin tone combinations down, even after doing some swatches. Needless to say, I found one that sufficed to get the darker skin tones of persons of African descent like my self have understanding undertones and light and shadow.

I used a photo of a guy from a royalty free site and whipped out my post card sized 4″x6″ Arches 140 lb paper and my paints and got to work. My Instagram has some video of the progress so feel free to check it out @houseoffrancois.

Overall I’m pleased with the skin tones, working on facial proportions and positioning will require continued sketches from my art books! Another project to look forward too!