Practicing

I’ve always loved drawing and painting portraits. I’ve done a fair amount of portraits with acrylic paints, but only recently did I decide to try my hand at watercolor. I’ve always been a little afraid of watercolor because it feels more unforgiving than acrylic. With acrylic, if I make a mistake, I only need to wait a few minutes until it dries before I can paint over the mistake. With watercolor, if I make a mistake, I might need to start over.

The other thing about my skills I’ve noticed is that I have a harder time drawing men than women. I’m not really sure why, but there it is.

So I decided to practice both watercolor painting and drawing men. And because I didn’t want to feel too attached to any of my practice attempts, I thought I’d draw/paint a character I like rather than, say, my husband. If it were my husband, I would probably stop myself from pushing myself, for fear of ruining the picture.

The character I chose was Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (my favorite TV show). The actor, James Marsters, has amazing bone structure. The shadows on his face are so deep and sharp, it adds to the challenge of getting the portrait right.

My first two attempts are on 4 ½” x 6″ paper, and the third is on 6″ x 9″ paper. For some reason I can’t quite figure out, I could not get the proportions of Marters’ face correct on the smaller sized paper. I’m still not 100% satisfied with my attempts, but I feel as if I made some good progress by the third try.

Maybe I’ll try Angel next. (Hopefully, that will go better!)

My first attempt at drawing and painting Spike (James Marsters).

My second attempt at drawing and painting Spike (James Marsters).

My third attempt at drawing and painting Spike (James Marsters).