Portraits - Part 3 - Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek:

Salma Hayek

Year: 2009
Medium: Water Color, Acrylic Color, A4 Chart
Inspiration: This was drawn using a picture of Salma Hayek.

Description: The reason I chose to draw Salma Hayek was that her the pic that i chose as inspiration had different shades and that by itself was a challenge to replicate. So, i decided to give it a try.

Outline: The outline came out really well to my satisfaction. The challenge was to have a slanted head but then ensure that the facial features shouldn't get distorted. Once I managed to cover the facial features, the next challenge was to do the designs in the dress well.

Painting: I really love to follow a layered approach to painting. So, I started off with a light skin shade on the face. I then allowed it to dry and added white flashes with water color onto the right half of the forehead

Acrylic: The left side of the face had to have a bright flash (mainly near the left eye) since the light was falling on the left side of the face. I think the challenge with acrylic is in the way you handle it. You just have a minimal time when you handle acrylic, the paint gets dried-up really quick when it is right there on the brush but, if you can handle it well, then the quality of painting improves drastically.

Rosy Effect: Now, I had two coats done on the face, one with the skin color and then i topped it up with white flashes. The next step was to have the rosy effect on the cheeks and the forehead. I painted maroon with a thick bristled brush in the forehead and the right cheeks just to give the effect of pancake layering. I again topped up with acrylic flash near the left eyes and gave an unproportioned outline to the left cheek.

The Hair: I normally follow a layered approach to the hair wherein I use brown or blue as the base color and then i top it up with black shade to give a shiny effect. In this case, i used a brown base and then topped up with black. Again, for the flashy effect i used white line drags from front to back of the head.

The Skin: I used plain cream color and then accentuated the collar bone with brown color. I added brown shades to the outline of the hand and the neck to show the effect of light and shadow.

The Background: This is one of my most favorite backgrounds because the idea was to replicate a glass house full of plants in the background but it had to be flashed out to give a blurred effect. I was really happy with the outcome of using acrylic over green in the left side background. Acrylic whites are really effective when they are used to show effect of spot lights as in the left background.

The Unfinished Part: The designs in the dress were not completed because I wasn't confident that it will come out well. Apart from the yellow color used, there are pencil outlines visible because of this. Given a chance, I would like to make the colors in the drawing one shade bolder  to give a finished effect. I was really surprised about the likes i got for this painting here :

http://www.stars-portraits.com/en/portrait-124197.html

I guess since I named the portrait as Salma Hayek people started liking it. No wonder!

Portraits - Part 2 - Vadivelu Collage

This is the second in the series of posts I've written about my portrait drawings. You can find the first part here About Me.

Vadivelu Collage

About this Work:
This water / acrylic painting was done in the year 2010. This is one of my favorite portraits because I was successful in capturing the different movie roles of the great comedian Vadivelu. The idea was to do a collage of characters of Vadivelu. Therefore, I decided to capture the different poses of the actor and so, I picked different pictures of the actor and then the challenge was to capture all of those in one A1 size chart!
The Outline:
I started off by doing the outline of the Pulikesi (the center King-like Character). Then, I outlined the top right corner character, which is meant to sound Aoouvvvv. The tougher parts were yet to come since the left hand portion was already busy with some details of the background arch of the palace and also the costume of Pulikesi. So, I had to push the Naai Sekar character, in the top left corner to the background. I also purposefully chose it to be a cartoon because I wanted to add some variety in the collage.
The best part I liked doing in this collage is the Sunky-Monkey portion because I didn't have much choice but to draw it over the Pulikesi I had already outlined.
The Painting Plan:
Once I had completed the outline, I knew I had a very good scope for using different shades of paints because i was depicting different characters here. So, I wanted to use a contrast of colors to the characters.
Pulikesi Color Choice (Center Character):
It was a natural choice to choose bold and bright colors for the Pulikesi character because of the need to give the bejeweled effect. Right from my childhood, I have always enjoyed drawing shades for jewels. The jewels here lack a finish here, which was sort of planned so that the viewer's attention doesn't go too much onto the jewels - what a way to cover botch-ups!
To me, the main area of importance was the facial expression, the problem with water colors is, if you add a tinge of color here instead of there, it can totally change the facial expression -  a funny face can become sad. So, I was really careful about that aspect. Also, the crux of the facial expression was in the way the character had slanted the mouth open. I was really happy with the way I captured the twisted tongue. The mustache's slant and the angle also came out well to my satisfaction. I used some acrylic white on the face to exaggerate the make-up and show as if the character had put an extra coat of powder on the face.
Pulikesi's Eyes:
I really love drawing eyes and in this case, the two eyes were positioned in a weird angle to one another. Also, since the left eye was slightly closed compared to the right eye, the left cheek had to be prominent compared to the right. So, this helped me get the facial grimace  better.
AouVvvvv:
The top right character came out easier and well compared to what I had expected. This is where outlining is important. If you manage to do a good job of the outline, most of the drawing is done. Thereafter, it is about how patient you are with colors and drying with certain amount of planning. Just like Vadivelu says, "Edhaiyum PLAN panni seiyanum" ("Do everything only after planning" said in a certain funny slang). True, That dialogue has tonnes of management lesson in it.
Sunkey-Monkey:
The character in the bottom left was chosen to be shaded in blue because the other parts of the collage were colorful and also because it fitted well there, looking up the Pulikesi character with a funny expression.
Naai Sekar:
I decided to keep the Naai Sekar cartoon simple because the improvisation was already complete there since I had caricatured the original character and i didn't want to lose the caricature look. So, i played it safe there just adding a certain rose shade to the coat.
Areas to improve:
The portrait on a whole has a certain raw effect. I have always wanted my work to have a certain human touch so, I have not tried hard to improve that aspect but, I could have probably reduced the dirty effect all over the drawing. This is because the water and brushes I used had a tinge of black and they got carried all over onto the different colors. Always better to use black colors in the drawing after you complete using other colors and use separate brush for black and separate water medium too. That way, you don't get a sullied effect in your drawings. Good to have minuses though, it makes you strive for better!

My Portraits – Part 1

About me:

My name is Navin. Born in 1975, Drawing and painting have been my hobbies on and off. In this series, I'm going to cover some of my works.

How it all Started?

I don’t remember clearly at the moment but then if I’m right, I started taking interest towards drawing when I was of around 12 years old. I also am not clear what drew me closer to drawing as such. I think I basically did not like to study so, I wanted to vent it out through some other channel and I probably chose drawing then. A couple of consolation prizes gave me the required impetus to surge ahead. Then, life took its own course, I became busy with school board exams, went to college and totally forgot drawing and painting.

Re-Entry:

Somewhere around 2008-2009, my wife came to know that I could draw and she wanted me to pursue the art form because we thought my son could pick some of it. I haven’t learnt drawing and painting formally. Though, I love to learn it formally at some point of time in my life. I personally think that I need to improve on the finish aspect.

My works are created after observing some of other greats’ works in websites like http://www.stars-portraits.com/en/

My links:

http://www.stars-portraits.com/en/community/tarunbalaji.html

http://www.stars-portraits.com/en/community/tarunbalajis.html

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Portraits/121397631214399

Here are some of my favorite works I did between 2008 and 2010. These are free-hand portraits & no grids / measurements are used.

I decided to write about these works, one-at-a time, starting with this one now:

Johnny Depp:

Year: 2009

Medium: HB and B Pencils, charcoal, eraser, stubs

Inspiration: A colored photograph of Johnny Depp was used and just the shades were picked from it to transform the work into this black and white portrait.

Description: The background was done with charcoal. It is better to use charcoal at the end because it has the tendency to sully the other parts of the sheet. Also, the darker areas in the hair near the forehead got the charred effect due to the coal. The beard hair and the wavery effect in the hair is done using 6B pencils. The wrinkles in the shirt are captured by drawing with hb pencils and then using erasers and paper stubs over that. Also, the flashes in the face and forehead are the effect of getting a grey shade first using HB pencil and then using erasers in the center part to bring in the contrast. I personally like the details in the specs. It has black, grey and white shades rightly mixed due to proper pencil shading and using erasers in various levels of contrast.