For Week for of Let's Face It 2021, we had a class with Natalie Eslick, who demonstrated how she creates a portrait *including hands* which are always tricky. Her style is very distinctive; realistic but with a touch of the fantastical which I love. We started by sketching from a reference photo, then added some watercolours as a base, and finished with coloured pencils, building up the layers slowly to create depth and contrast.
Natalie showed us how you can use whatever colours you like, as long as you get the tonal values right. She used a limited palette of blues and reds and went with blues for the hair in her portrait. I really loved the model's bright red hair, so I chose to use red, magenta and orange along with indigo and a bright blue - but still only a very limited palette. Here's how mine turned out ...
I really enjoyed the watercolour effect for the hair and although the hands were a challenge, I got there in the end so I'm glad I didn't decide to hide them after all!
Roll on the next class - which is Wanderlust week five, due out tomorrow :o)
Comments