Color Portraits and Auklet (Part3)

Welp, it's been a while (one month to be exact).  A lot has been going on, so I'll just start off with my Figure Drawing class.  We worked with conte on cream paper a few more days after the first full figure study.  I honestly hated the first one I made, but looking at them all in a row, I think I made some progress by the end!

Conte on cream paper study (1)

Conte on cream paper study (2)

Conte on gray paper study (3)

This model was actually the same model from the first study.  Yep, big difference.

After the conte studies, we moved on to small portraits on different color paper.  For my first one, I did what I'm used to and drew it with black and white charcoal.  But after that, my teacher encouraged us to expand into color, so I took a leap and used chalk pastels.  I've used chalk pastels before, so I thought "Hey! This'll be easy!"  No.  Maybe it's just me, but rendering skin tone/shadows realistically without using black and white makes my brain hurt.  In my second portrait, I actually tried using grays to make shadows in her face (first try on the left in the Portrait2 picture below), but it just made her skin look like she dipped her face in soot.  So I asked my teacher for help and he told me to combine complimentary colors (red and green are the best for skin tones) to create neutral shadows.  I guess I should have remembered that from Color Theory...

He also gave me a book of Lucian Freud's paintings, who was a god among men when it came to figure painting.  You will rarely see black in his figures.  Instead, he used variations of brownish yellows, reds and greens to create shading, and small amounts of pure white to emphasize important highlights.  Throughout all of my art classes, I've learned that if you're trying to render something realistically, black is a no-no.  Blacks and grays are huge color absorbers, and overusing them can quickly desaturate your work.  So I'm working on retraining my brain to see shadows as colors rather than black and white.  For now I can only hope that one day I will understand color as well as Lucian Freud.

Girl with White Dog - Lucian Freud, 1950-51, oil on canvas
(via The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth)

Standing by the Rags - Lucian Freud, 1988-89, oil on canvas
(via The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth)

Reflection, Self-portrait - Lucian Freud, 1985, oil on canvas
(via The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth)

Here are my portraits:

Portrait1 - black and white charcoal on gray paper

Portrait2 - chalk pastels on gray paper (first try - left, final - right)

Portrait3 - chalk pastels on blue paper (first try - left, second try - right)

Portrait3 - chalk pastels on blue paper (final)

My second attempt at color went a lot better.  And if any of you want a really good set of chalk pastels, I bought the Faber-Castell 48 pack for this class, and they're totally worth it.

Finally, surprise update: Remember the Auklets???  I couple weeks ago I decided to pull it out of its dusty corner and start working on it again, and I'm ALMOST done.  Yes it's been over half a year, but uhh better late than never... I guess.  I hope that bringing this back into public view will force me to finally complete it:

Whiskered Auklet Mug Shot (so close!)