portrait: Denis

 I took some very unposed photos of my friend Denis to use in making portrait. He hasn't said he hates it so I am going to go with he is OK with it. I am. I think it came out well. It think the resemblance is there and it's got some expression and emotion in it. (He was getting jumped on by my dog at the time.) 

I used Sketchbook Pro again and the ink brushes really work for me. I have had some problems with Procreate and the ink brushes on portraits so I think I'll stick with this for people and procreate for some other stuff. Its really the stipple work that looks much better I think. I used my 3 shades techniques for the hair, something I have been doing for the last few portraits. Most of my friends have grey, white or some combo of that hair now and the three tones, a black, white and grey give the hair more life over just black lines. Maybe it's a phase I'm going through. 

Illustration: Tobias Blaine Allen

 

Click to see larger version.

I have been trying to do portraits of these close to me lately and it isn't always easy. For one thing, almost no one wants me to do them. They seem to like the finished artwork and you might think after a couple of them get good response my other friends would be more open to it. Nope! So asked my good friend Toby who is an artist in New Mexico to pose, but wasn't sure how I could get to see him to take reference photos. He offered to take them himself and while I'm not usually good with that, he has done enough self portraits and I was able to look at what he did and request changes. A good photo often does not make a good drawing for some reason so there was some back and forth and I finally settled on what I wanted to do. 

Another advantage is he is a better artist than I will ever be and gave really solid feedback as I worked on it. He is the first and likely the last to request "more wrinkles please".  The portrait looks better the more you enlarge it, I think. The stipple work gets lost on smaller screen images. 

I went further with shading than I have wanted to at Toby's suggestion and it does work. It's mostly stipple and line with some solid greys and white pencil for the beard and hair. Drawn in Sketchbook Pro this time. 

Illustration: Model in profile

I have been itching paint something in colour again for a while in Krita. I finally got some time to over theist week or so. It took a longer time than normal to sketch it out... the fingers were a confusing mess but also what I thought made it more interesting. 

I did my current technique of a solid colour silohuette and then added blocks of colour for shading and highlights, getting more detailed each pass until it looked ready to blend the colours into more natural tones. This seems to make it go quicker, maybe because this approach lets me see problems before doing tons of details and having to redo them. 

The guy wasn't the best of people, to be honest, but he made a decent model. He knew what he was selling but made the mistake of thinking everyone was looking to buy it. 

illustration: Art, mais 2022 @ Mobius Meadows Farmstead

 I did a trick my friend Mike Luce uses and took some reference photos in a sneaky way so I could do a portrait of my friend Art on his farm in Vermont. Mike does it to get more natural poses and I did it because no one wants to pose for me. I still would like to have done portraits of most of my friends so this stealth method might just get me there, eventually. I wasn't going to show this if he was mad i did it or did not like it and he wasn't and he did - so here it is. 

This is in the style of a portrait I did in December of my friend Keamy and my plan is do all the friend portrait like this. I used Procreate since I can draw anywhere and when I have a few minutes.