Saturday, September 12, 2009

BFBM : Portrait of A


Portrait of a friend painted with watercolour on smooth grained handmade paper. Reference was a mediocre quality photograph taken with flash. It is difficult in such a context to define clear cut light and shade. However, to achieve her radiant expresion I had to eliminate a lot of middle tones and the result is something that made me happy. It is always an excellent experience to paint portraits in monochrome using the traditional wash technique. Wash technique involves painting in layers or placing various transparent tones of the colour layer upon layer. It is the first time I painted on this paper and I am impressed with the result.