Lady Graphite Portrait

This is already the fourth week of my course - and almost the end of January!!  Whoa, can we just slow it down a bit.   Just an update that even though we live in the "deep South" I am feeling like it's the Midwest.  Our snow never materialized, but the arctic blast sure did and here we are at noon and it still isn't above freezing.   I don't think this is supposed to happen here!!

Anyway, on to the lesson results.  Actually I lightened the photo quite a bit.  Even though I shot this outside it came out pretty dark.  So the actually photo, if you lightened the whites, looks more like this, it isn't nearly as washed out as it appears.

This lesson was a lot more in my comfort zone than last week's van Gough.  I started out doing portraits with this method - using a stump/tortillion to put the graphite around the painting.  It actually becomes  loaded with graphite and you can either clean or use it like a brush of sorts.  Always a tug of war adding and subtracting graphite.  I did have a new aid, a Tombow Zero eraser that is just a tiny little guy and together with the soft putty it really helped take me back to the white paper.  Have to say it always surprises me at how workable Bristol paper is and how many layers it can actually take.  I also used my silicone blenders and a cosmetic sponge to smooth and move the graphite around.   I also learned a different way to do hair and looking at it right now don't think I smoothed it enough in the bun - but oh well.  Bit take away from this lesson after watching Kellye's videos is that you probably need to keep going for another 4-5 layers once you think you are finished.  I probably still didn't really get the tonal differences that I should have.

Sheila, I now have no reason to procrastinate on watching the GIMP videos and working with it - wish I could say I was excited, but I know I will just end up pretty frustrated.  No, have to go with Helen's motto for the week - "Courage doesn't always roar; sometimes it is the quite voice at the end of the day that says, "I think I will try again tomorrow"   I am going to get this!!    Why, because I have an excellent teacher who knows how these thing work.  

thanks much for stopping by and taking a look