Valerie Jones News

Portrait Drawing Class - Work in Progress #2

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:39:51 CST

"Souzi", Work in Progress

We got a lot done in drawing class today! We worked on Souzi’s mouth and her ear. It was fun to draw the pathways in her lips.

We don’t have class next Friday due to an extensive portrait drawing workshop by Daryl Reimer at the Bartlesville Art Association.

Next class, February 17th…we will follow all the wonderful pathways of the face and create the skin tones of the cheeks, chin, and forehead.

Happy drawing!

Portrait Drawing Class - Work in Progress #1

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:11:31 CST

"Souzi", Work in Progress

I am so excited for our Friday drawing class to get here! We are working on Souzi in graphite. She looks a little bit like a reverse raccoon at the moment! But just you wait….She’ll be a beauty before too much longer.

Hmmm….what should we work with next? I am thinking we will work on the lips and the ear this Friday.

We haven’t put in her eyelashes. I am going to wait until the end to put those in. I want the skin tones just right before adding those jewels. I will also wait until the end to put the little wisps of hair around her head.

For this drawing, we added the hair first. I usually don’t do that, but her hair is soooo dark. I didn’t want us taking a lot of important class time adjusting skin tones. When a person has dark hair, it is easy to go too light on the skin tones in the beginning.

Happy drawing!

Colored Pencil Portrait Class - Work in Progress #2

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:18:08 CST

"Souzi" Work in Progress

We were having so much fun in class on Saturday that before we knew it, class time was over. No one wanted to stop working.

I showed the class how to create eyes. Eyes really bring a painting to life. The eyes are where the soul of a person lies.

Souzi’s eyes are dark, so dark that you can hardly see the pupil. What make the eyes shine is leaving the white of the paper for the highlight. If you get the highlight too small, it is extremely difficult to get it back. So, draw the highlight larger than it really is. You can always make it smaller later.

The whites of the eyes are never white, so we added some color with Prismacolor French Grey 10%, Warm Grey 20%, Cloud Blue, and Periwinkle. Why the blues? The shirt Souzi wore to pose in has blue in it. The blue was reflecting in the whites of the eyes.

Eyes, black & white

I wanted to make sure I was getting the correct value of color in the skin tones around the eyes. I converted the color image to black & white and compared it to a black & white image of the original.

Original Photo

I can see that in the darkest shadow in the creases, I hit the mark. I also see some areas that need adjusting. I will re-work these areas by adding more dark colors. I am leaving the eyelashes out until the values around the eyes are correct.

I am so looking forward to class again on Saturday! We will work on the eyebrows and nose.

Colored Pencil Portrait Class - Work in Progress

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:58:15 CST

Souzi - Work in Progress

What fun we are having in the colored pencil portrait class! Four wonderful artists and myself are working on “Souzi”.

This is our second week to work on this portrait. Don’t let the hollow eyes frighten you! We will have those beauties put in next week.

We are using the Prismacolor Portrait Pencil Set to complete the skin tones. We are also using Ann Kullberg's Skin Tone Bar as a guideline to select our color values.

The first overall layers or “washes” of skin tone value was put over the whole faces except the eyes and highlight areas. The colors used in these washes are: Cream, Light Peach, Jasmine, Pink Rose, Beige. This was done on the first week of working on Souzi.

The second week, we started modeling her facial features a little more. We used Sand on most of the face. Some areas of the face aren’t quite as yellow, so we only used it as needed.

The next color was Yellow Ochre. Souzi’s facial features really started coming to life when using this color. We used Yellow Ochre only in the shadow areas of the face. These shadow areas are on the right-facing side of her face and around the shadows of her eyes, nose, mouth, and chin.

After using Yellow Ochre, we moved on to Peach. We put Peach everywhere on the skin except the highlighted areas. We leave the highlighted areas the white of the paper. Once color hits these, it is extremely difficult to remove.

We moved on to Salmon Pink after the Peach. Salmon Pink was used only in the darkest part of the shadow areas.

Class time ended way too soon! We are looking forward to next week when we add the eyes and maybe a few more skin tones.

See you again soon!

New Studio

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:23:40 CST

We recently moved to a different house…with it came lots of wonderful lighting for a studio! I am so excited to finally have natural light to work with.

I made a vow with myself to have studio hours that will be uninterrupted. How did it work today? hmmm….I kept finding things to side-track me. You know….emails, Facebook, music.

What things side-track you from being in the studio?