Sarah Shahi Portrait

Finished this portrait of Sarah (Person of Interest) yesterday and published it in the Google+ community.  Got lots of likes and positive comments.  I think I will put portraits aside for awhile now and do something different.  But here she is.  I like how she turned out.  Done on steel grey paper.

Progress!

Today I joined a Google+ community where artists can participate in group art challenges sponsored by Lachri (the artist I am supporting on Patreon).  The August challenge is to redo something you did earlier to see if there is improvement.  Here are my two Brown-headed Nuthatches, one from my earliest attempts last year and the second done just the last 2 weeks.

2015

August 2016

Celeb Portraits

I continue to have an interest in portraits and received some very useful advice recently.  Here's the gist:  most photos of our friends are taken with cell phones and do not have adequate lighting to create a good portrait, leading usually to unsatisfying results.  Lachri, an artist I support through Patreon, suggests that we work with celebrity photos as these are always professionally done.  So recently I have nearly completed two:  Tea Leoni and Catriona Balfe.  I think they show significant improvement over my earlier attempts.  Then when you feel confident with skin tones and textures you can switch to the lesser photographs with a better idea of how to improve them.

Recent Work

Wow!  I'm amazed at how much time has gone by since the last time I posted anything here.  Since June I've completed a portrait of my cat Buddy sleeping and two more Great Blue Heron pieces.  Here they are.