I love drawing portraits of my friends and family - over the years, I've ended up with a pretty large collection of many of the people close to me. While I've tried a few different methods with them, like plain charcoal or combining charcoal and chalk pastel, they mostly follow the same process: I ask for a picture of the person and draw what I see in the photo. This is often just a straight-on shot of the person with either not much or random things in the background. I don't give much thought to the composition, just however the photo is taken, or the expression, just whatever the expression is in the photo the person sent. They only convey so much about each person - so how do I go about creating a portrait with more personality?
I tried this out with a portrait of my grandpa. To start off with, I set things up myself to take the reference photos. This way I could make the decisions myself for how I wanted it to be. Then I thought through what would express my grandpa's personality - how could I include his hobbies? What style would fit him? Which color would be best? Which medium?
I wanted to include his love for nature - like how he spends a lot of his time in the sunroom, filled with light with a great view of his beautiful garden that's perfect for watching the birds, butterflies, and squirrels. I wanted to include his love of photography and combined these by depicting him photographing a flower. Green would be the dominant color for the nature, with a pop of the pink magnolia for contrast. I also used a lot of warm colors to give it the feeling of warm sunshine.
I made a list of these ideas to brainstorm, and then created some sketches as ideas for the composition and pose.
Based on these, I took several reference photos from different angles so that I could use whichever was best.
I used the last one for the portrait, as well as an online photo of a magnolia - there was a tree in my grandpa's yard, but it had rained just the night before and turned them brown.
Now I also wanted to try a new method with the media: combining watercolor pencils and chalk pastels. I wanted to use the watercolor pencils to create a smooth initial layer to add depth to the piece, and I wanted the wide range of colors and some of the texture of the chalk pastels.
I started by coloring in the whole piece with a very basic wash of the watercolor pencils.
Once I had these first layers of colors down, I started adding layers of chalk pastel - this I mainly used to show the leafy textures of the trees, add in the finer branches, and darken some areas or adjust their color.
Then I went back in one final time with watercolor pencils - I didn't wet them, but rather just used the sharpened tips to add the finest details and any remaining shading.
I'm really happy with how personalized and expressive this portrait is! I also loved this combination of media and how it created depth, vibrant colors, and a good amount of detail. I hope to create more pieces similar to this one!