Day Two : #OneWeek100People 2020 : From Silhouettes to Puzzle-People

Hey Everyone! It’s day two of #OneWeek100People 2020.

How’s your sketching going? It’s only Tuesday – you’ve got loads of time yet!

I’m still working on the my street scenes.

I hope to have something to show tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s some more of my practice, practice, practice.

Like a lot of you I’m sure, I collect people on Instagram who post great self-portraits.

This is @Pinsent_Tailoring. He makes and models historical costumes. I think I could sketch almost everything he posts.

I know this is kind of a side-jaunt from my own #OneWeek100People – but you know – I’m always a little nervous before I do some ‘important paintings’.

Watercolor – it’s NOT like riding a bike.

It’s more like – idk – playing violin? olympic fencing? Something where you lose your timing and delicacy if you spend any significant time away.

So, remember in yesterday’s video – the bit about doing the skin tone in the right order? How I want the hair to be dry-ish by the time I come back for the features?

That’s the same thing that’s going on here. Each of these sketches is a little puzzle. What shape-blocks can I paint, wet-to-wet – where I want the shapes to fuse – and where do I make the hard/dry edges.

But mostly, it’s about leaving a gap for the face.

The hair, or a hat – then a white face-gap – then the collar or a scarf – that leaves me a nice dry fire-break.

As I’m taking a little more care to be illustrative – I’m taking more time here, fussing the reserved white-flecks in the color blocks. It’s those sharp whites that make the drawing.

This one from @creepy.julia was a little nerve-wracking.

Following my system, I painted all the hair in one go. That meant cutting a silhouette around both faces and their joined hands, the getting to the gowns – painted wetter to pull out pigment from the hair – and only then coming back into the white spaces and using a few strokes to make fingers and faces.

That’s a lot of anticipation before I find out if I’d drawn the hands well enough!

I picked the photographer up top (from @leicamaniatic) for the same reason. The enjoyed all the stacked negative shapes I’d have to cut around – BEFORE coming back to make the fingers.

If you can build a person out of these puzzle pieces of color – learning when to let wet touch wet, and when to keep a dry spot – well, that’s the trick isn’t it?

Sometimes, if the subject is strongly side-lit – (this is @teresadelsole by @unfioresullaluna – not very well drawn here – she looks like ScarJo) – you can use the background color to ‘close off’ the edge of the face.

If you imagine this sketch without the background, can you see how the left side of the face is ‘open’ to the white paper?

So, that’s some more of my learnings for #OneWeek100People

The puzzle pieces! The Interlocking shapes in a figure!

Hard edges OUTSIDE a shape, soft, fused edges INSIDE.

Only leave white gaps where you absolutely need them.

See how there are sharp white edges on @FannyRosie’s scarf, and fingers?

But not inside the shadowy hat? Not between her lower arm and torso?

Those are shadowed spaces – so they need to fuse together.

Hard vs. Soft choices.

This is why I’m gravitating away from pen and ink drawing. (Sorry! I know some of you still love the fountain pen best of all).

I’ve realized – watercolor gives you the ability to choose – when to use a line, when to use a shape. When to be hard, when to be soft.

This sketch of @takerukohara_sono1 – I’m very happy with the variety of puzzle pieces.

The face is razor sharp outside, but softer inside. The highlight on the hair is sharp, but within it, soft low contrast shapes. The scarf, fused to hair, but, soft inside it’s shape, but held separate from the body with line. The backpack fuses into the coat, but has just enough inside shapes to show it’s weight, it’s drape, hint at straps and buckles. And all this is done without using exaggerated color to break up shapes.

Fun hey?

All the puzzle pieces should snap together almost without thinking.