Watercolour Portrait Practice

Continuing with the portrait series led me to quite a challenging reference photo which had a lot of shadow as well as a hair colour I never painted before. The shadows and face shape overwhelmed me a bit since the skin tone was pretty pale against a white background with light coloured hair….the perfect recipe for a great learning experience!

Proportions are my enemy! That and patience…lol…I think I have to start making a checklist of all the elements I want captured and mark them off when done. Sometimes in past pieces, when I thought I was done I came to realise that I either forgot the lashes, or the brows, the glint of the eye or a shadow…you name it, I’ve probably forgotten it!

The one part I do love  in this piece is her eye in the shadow, slowly but surely I’m learning to have patience with these tiny but significant features that add so much more realism to a piece and I am loving the process!