|
Thanks, Sharon
The photo with subject sounds like a great idea. I guess it would work just as well with a B&W print as with a color print since you're grabbing the color from the subject.
What I've been doing is using the photos to locate the pupils of the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth to nostril distance. Usually I have done drawings before I do any photography so I have some idea of what I think I want. If the pupils don't show, or the eyes are averted, I use the eye lines. I measure the distances between these landmarks to give me a formula, a set of ratios, that can be easily scaled to the size of the painting. I put four dots of charcoal on the panel where these features are going to go, and then start drawing. I don't bother to draw in the whole outline of the head and other parts of the subject unless I'm worried about a difficult pose. Then I might do a fairly detailed drawing(s) in charcoal on paper. This painting of Kim was started as a four dot drawing, with very little else. Then I just start painting, the eyes, mouth and under-nose shadow first. As long as I keep the four cardinal points located I can reliably get a likeness. I can modify the features if I want and still get back to where I started. I try to get all the drawing and values worked out in the underpainting, usually raw umber and white. Once I start coloring I try to get the subject live as often as possible to check the skin tones, but I often wind up painting from memory. I guess that's where the surrealism creeps in, huh, Denise?
I think this is similar to an algorithm for face recognition by computer, although I'd been using it for a long time before that thought occured to me. There is an interesting thread on this Forum that I have to get back to (about methods for getting a likeness) with information about artists doing something similar. Until I saw that I thought I was unique in the way I was doing this. I know that nobody asked about how I went about things, but I thought it might be useful to somebody.
I really want to thank everyone for this valuable help. There is a ton of information here that's going to take me days to check out.
|