Literary Pursuit

It has been a while since I did figure painting and I am back painting with this one.

Reference photo : Ross Lynem from paintmyphoto.ning.com
12 by 4.5 inches on Arches 140 lb.

Waiting For The Bus

I did another colored pencil drawing of this street scene from Satu Mare, Romania that I found through Google Maps Street View. The unique szekely gates are present at the entrance to every households in Romania. These couples waiting for bus caught my attention that I was tempted to use it for my drawing. As with any colored pencil drawings, the white of the paper shows through. Some like it , some don’t. I fall in the latter group. I feel it could have been better with a colored paper background. Well, we always learn from each painting/drawing.

In colored pencil on 7.5 by 9 inches Canson Drawing paper

Playing Dress Up

Here is my first painting for this year. I am personally not satisfied with the painting because of the error in judgement during the sketching stage. I read a tip somewhere online to use watercolor pencil for outline since the color would dissolve away during subsequent washes. For most part, the color did dissolve but the outline still remained. To make matter worse, I used sky blue watercolor pencil to outline the sketch. I had to use the “proxy” brushes for cleaning the dental braces to scrub away most of the stubborn lines. It helped to a certain extent. So I feel my result is so and so.

This sweet shy girl is my niece playing dress-up for a fancy dress competition at her school. The reference photo is courtesy of her parents. I hope they like it.

9 by 12 inches on 140# watercolor paper

Beach Bum Again

The skin tone is way off in this picture. I will replace this image as soon as I take a photo of the painting.
I painted Beach Bum Again to see how it would look like in acrylic. It was much easier to do the background water and the hair in acrylic. I am okay with the skin tone. All in all I am satisfied with the outcome of this painting.

Beach Bum Again
9 by 12 inches on Strathmore Acrylic Sheet

Beach Bum

Beach Bum
9 by 12 inches on 140# cp watercolor paper
Reference photo : From nizi at Morguefile

Onlooker

This painting is part of the DSFDF challenge that is hosted by the artist Karin Jurick. As suggested by Karin, I did a full figure sketch first as shown below:

Then I proceeded with painting the figure in watercolor. This exercise helped me build confidence and mitigated the lingering doubt in my mind about my figure sketching skills. Obviously I did not strive to build an exact likeness of the person since that was not my goal.

Onlooker
6 by 9 inches on 140 -lb cp watercolor paper
Reference photo by Karin Jurick

Samvid

Samvid at Four
Graphite on 12 by 19.5 inches on drawing paper

Diana

This painting is done after the DSFDF online challenge.

Update later today : I tackled this painting putting my portrait painting on hold. It is something I usually do not do. But considering the fact that I already missed on the past few DSFDF challenges, I thought I better get this out of the way.

Diana
Acrylic, 6 x 12 inches on Strathmore Acrylic Paper
Reference Photo by Karin Jurick