Watercolor – Interesting Faces

Often I find myself looking at interesting faces. While the placement of eyes, nose and mouth follow some standard rules, it is the facial structure and texture of faces that I find a challenge to paint in transparent watercolor. Most often I paint from reference pictures which allow me to make some measurements during the drawing process to be sure the feature placement is correct. Changing the lips just a 1/16th of an inch will most often dramatically change the expression and perhaps loose the true portrait of the person. I use an engineering scale and dividers to check my drawings. While this can be time consuming, as Charles Reid has noted in his book, drawing is 80% of a good watercolor painting.

I believe in honing my drawing skills and go to various open life studios once a week. It is a bonus for me when the group chooses long poses as it allows me to draw and then paint in watercolor. As a musician practices scales to keep in practice, drawing from life is a necessity. Family and friends now duck out of sight when I have my sketch book or camera and approach them.

Here are a few recent painting. I hope you find them interesting too!