Placement and Color in Art Portrait

Let's look at this great portrait of a girl. What caught my eye about this was the colors-red and turquoise. We don't have to do pastels, colored pencils or paint in what colors we think are obvious, we can use different colors from our pallettes. Try it!
Also, check out the measurements. I love doing that. I start with my fingers, my thumb on the portraits chin, my pointer finger on the top of the head, I slide my fingers down to meet, and if the portrait has been done with the eyes in the middle of the head, my fingers will meet right half way down the head.
I am doing an online free drawing class. The teacher actually uses grids and tools to draw portraits so that the drawing is as accurate as possible before any shading is done.

Practice Drawing with Coffee in my Art Journal

Before I left the house yesterday, I grabbed the left over coffee and did a practice drawing all over the huge spread in my huge art journal. I grabbed the blower dryer, drying the pages as my family was walking out of the house. Then I sandwiched the two pages together and rubbed them. By the time I got into the car, the pages were dry enough for me to draw on top of. And so I did. Suzette Morrow from the Art Studio did this as an exercise. After you do the drawing, and let it dry, you look to see what you see standing out to you and draw over it with pencil. You know, like when you look into the clouds and see different things. Most of my page showed sea creatures to me so I drew on them. I didn't get to the beach today which my husband and I try to get there every week to two weeks. I guess I was really missing it.

My Collection

Those little old postcards of holidays and children playing or a man and woman walking together with umbrellas, cards from the early 1900's; these little jewels are my collection. Inexpensive to collect ranging from $1.00 to $4.00 is well worth the joy they bring. A bit whimsical, with some having sayings on them or the name of the holiday, these cards decorate an antique window shutter in my kitchen and are collected safely in an antique pocketbook. I visit these cards as though they are the Mona Lisa in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. They are now free to look at on a daily basis and can be copied or implemented as originals into my art work. I am quite afraid of doing that though. So from now on, I am going to make a colored copy of the piece and plan a rough sketch with paints and papers or even drawn out with colored pencils. Then, if I feel it is a workable piece and I am inspired enough, I will apply it to a canvas and paint and collage away.

Toady's new piece is two lovely girls standing next to each other with a bit of sparkle added to a rope they are holding onto as they stand in water. this precious piece was found in a box in a store in Newburyport Massachusetts. Right before getting in to the van with my husband and kids, I found a little store, sort of an antique shop, everything greatly priced; from furniture to glassware, old books (I loved one that I just could not buy today. It was a psalter from the mid 1800's. Songs written by Watts were in the book without the music. Unbelievable poetry that was sung in church years ago played by an organist. But I at least walked out with the cute little picture of those girls.