The Girl, Steps 1 and 2

Color sketch of The Girl

Step 1: I drew a head shape, penciled in eye sockets, tip of nose, and line of mouth. I wet the paper (student grade, purchased for my grandchildren) and dropped in a wash of pale yellow, red, blue, and tipped my paper, adding water to encourage flow and melding of color. After this dried, I wet areas in shadow (light coming from our left, top) and dropped in yellow, then red, then blue.

Step 2: After the shadow shapes dried, I wet the hair area, dropped in yellow, red, blue – letting and helping colors run together. I scraped highlights with my painting knife. Student grade paper does not hold a scrape very well; the area filled in with damp paint. But I like the linear effect. I darkened the eye shapes and mouth, dampened the background and ran in red and blue to create purple.

Next, I will draw and paint The Girl on Arches 140 lb. cold press. My aim will be to paint an entirely new painting.

Lundin Watercolor Portrait Workshop • Heads, Features & Faces

I'm looking forward to teaching the Watercolor Portrait Workshop — Heads, Features, and Faces — at the Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, MN. The three-day workshop starts this Friday, October 15, from 9 AM to 4 PM. Painters of all levels are welcome to attend. For information, log onto — www.lundinart.com. To register, phone Shannon at the Duluth Art Institute, (218) 723-1310.

The image above is a detail of a color sketch I did earlier today. I used watercolor and gouache. My aim was to paint layers of transparency and translucency, to capture the  woman's gaze, the light in her eyes, the expression of her mouth, the warm and cool tones of her skin.

Inspired by AidaBaby

Baby skin is like rose petals, a baby mouth like a bud, hair, feathery wisps. Babies are a joy to paint and require a tender touch. I will install a "how to" on my website.

Workshop prep portrait

Color study — girl of the day — inspired by a hair model in Real Simple magazine. When playing with color and shape, experimenting with method, I like working from images of people I don't know. It helps to reduce variables when I don't need to think about whether or not my drawing/painting looks like Gloria or Keith or Grandma, etc.

While working on this color sketch, I thought about position/angle of her head, head architecture, proportion, neutral color, linear movement, musculature of her neck, including the bonnet strings which is how Edgar Whitney referred to the sternocleidomastoid muscles of the neck.

Makes me smile to think of how Ed Whitney always encouraged us to think.

An aside: A student once told Ed, "If I knew I'd have to think so much, I wouldn't take taken this workshop."

Lundin Watercolor Portrait Workshop

I'm teaching a three-day watercolor portrait workshop — Heads, Features, and Faces — at the Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, MN, Friday-Sunday, October 15-17, 2010, 9 AM - 4 PM.

To register, please contact the DAI. For more information, email me or post your query below (thank you).

Look forward to painting with you at the workshop.

Iris Exploration

I like to explore a new subject by doing sketches and studies. My first approach is somewhat academic: analysis of line, shape, color, and value. Tomorrow (or later today) I'll break up the (iris) shape and reorganize it and see what happens.

Dylan Days Art Exhibit 2010

Fellow artists are invited to enter artwork in the upcoming Dylan Days Art Exhibition 2010, May 27-30, at Zimmy's in downtown Hibbing, MN. All media are welcome. Basic criteria: work inspired by the life and lyrics of Bob Dylan. For more information and entry form, log onto www.dylandays.com.