Today I took up courage to paint a portrait. It has been long 3 months since I painted one.. and that was just my 3rd.
I believe portrait drawing and painting is an in born skill.. and like every other skill it can be acquired.. but needs tremendous hard work .. which I haven't done. I have seen friends draw looking at a pic or even looking at a person with amazing accuracy. I never could do that. This is one reason I never ventured to Portraits and got stuck in my comfort zone of landscape painting.
I had got some insights into face proportion in one portrait class I attended.. last week another friend who does a lot of portrait told me about proportion of eyes... That the gap between eyes are the length of an eye. It was amazing thing which I never knew. So I did this one to try it.
My sketch initially was not accurate. Even though I had made guide lines with the length, felt the distance was bit more than it should be. But I went ahead with painting. After painting one eye I realised the mistake and corrected it
It looked good after finishing the second eye
Finally the dress with some expressive watercolor strokes and spray .. it was too restrictive drawing the eyes so just felt I needed freedom towards the end.
Final
Total time 90 minutes
300 gsm arches cold press paper
8x11 in