Portraits

After working as a Forensic Artist where I was either sculpting or using pencil, I was itching to add color.  I could easily find animals to paint.  Or celebrities, but phooey, phtooey-- who wants more pics of those folks?  It was kind of hard to find faces of everyday people to practice portraiture in paint and  I hate battling the elements & lugging materials to work en plein air.  So sometimes I pulled images from the TV.  Here's one of those that I think came out well.  It was done like most of my animals, in Oilstick. They are fabulous to work with, but only in controlled temperature.

Just recently, wanting to return to portraiture, I found an artist with a very admirable wild style--David Lobenberg.  So I took his class though I really had never worked with watercolor before.  I love his work because he uses bright colors, unlike most watercolorists I have seen, plus he adds crazy textures like in acrylics.  I did these two folks in my newly purchased watercolors.  I learned a lot, not the least of which was that there is now a website where people can upload pictures of themselves for artist's to use.  (OMG!  Are you kidding me?  Who knew?) So it's quite possible that you will recognize these two characters from there.  Also, do check out David's work and online demos.