Thursday, January 7, 2010

Boredom can be a beautiful thing.

Within just a few days of returning home for the holidays, I found myself extremely bored. No more early wake-ups or firing on all cylinders through the night... Although I loved sleeping in every day and gorging myself on delicious home cooking (as well as plenty of holiday sweets). Many of my friends had not yet come back, or even finished school, so I decided I had to give myself some work to do. So, I asked all of my friends to send me good photographs of themselves for me to do a digital portrait for them. I flew out of the gates by cranking out 5 on the first day. Production quickly trailed off, and I still have a few more to do before I retire this project, but I'm happy with my progression. I learned a lot about discerning colors among tricky context differences, and rendering reflected light. I've done 16 of these since I started a few weeks back, and these are some of my favorites:



















All of these portraits were first sketched free-handed and then painted from reference (no tracing, paintovers, or eyedropping). I used only 1 layer for the sketch and a second one for the paint. Took 40 to 90 minutes (if I got caught up tweaking brush options for the hair) each.

Thanks to all of my friends for helping me out and encouraging me!

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