A man’s skin is darker and redder than a woman’s (typically) . So I am putting in some darker colors on Larry’s forehead.
Continuing work on a double portrait of the client and her beloved husband, Larry.
These 7 pics show step-by-step how I made the eyebrows and forehead, creating smooth, luminous skin.
1
Larry's forehead is a large expanse of skin with many color and value transitions (value = lightness/darkness). Since capturing human skin requires layering many different colored pencils, it’s easy to get lost in all those patches of different colors and shades that blend into one another.
So first, to orient myself, I put in the eyebrows. Eyebrows have to be included because they are an integral part of the forehead and add shapes to the bottom edge of the forehead area.
Beginning with the edge of Cheri’s hair, I work left to right on Larry’s first eyebrow, adding the pieces of skin color that are “attached” to that eyebrow above and below it. Now I have the correct values (lightness/darkness) and the correct colors (peaches, mauves, tans, browns, and mushroom-grey) to help guide me as I expand from here.
2
Added the other eyebrow, and some of the adjacent colors attached to it’s right-hand end. Now the forehead is mostly “enclosed” with the right colors and values. Now I fill in all the complex, but very subtle, shades that make up the center.
ARTISTS:
Notice that some of the strokes - like on the right side of the forehead, are fairly rough; you can see the pencil strokes. They will be blended into smooth skin by the many layers of other colors I add to them. The big dark areas in the upper left and upper right of Larry’s forehead help guide me on the colors I need to use. Those are the darkest darks of Larry’s forehead. They help establish the values for my eye on that grey paper. (Notice the grey paper is a similar value to those brown and rust shades.) Now my eye knows to make every value lighter, and much-lighter, than those darkest areas.
3
Working from the muted-peach and mauves I added adjoining the right eyebrow (near Larry’s temple), I’m now building the highlights of Larry’s “brow”: the areas of skin over the bone ridge that we all have above our eye-sockets. The colors of a portrait are a rendition of flesh over bone. For each individual human, the shapes (portrayed by values of colors) are unique to that person.
4
The brow ridge above the left eyebrow is finished — and of course the area between the eyebrows where the top of the nose joins the forehead had to be included - no facial feature exists separately, they are all connected.
Now the forehead is enclosed. The area in the center gets smaller and smaller…
5
This is one reason I had to “build” the dark areas on the both sides of the forehead, and the lighter brow-ridge across the bottom of the forehead (above the eyebrows). There are so many different shapes of color and value across the central area of forehead, that all blend together…but they have to be in the right place and relationship to eachother. It’s easy to get lost in those different pinks and peaches, and cream and gold that you see here. The “forehead wrinkles” across the center of Larry’s forehead are indicated by my lightest pencils (pale cream). If I hadn’t put in all the other structures to help orient me, if I’d tried to just start adding in those light cream lines on the grey paper, how would I know exactly where to put them? If I had put them just a bit too high or too low, or too far to the right, Larry’s forehead would not have been accurate. It would not look like HIS forehead. All the other structures I built in from the edges, gave me a place to “attach” the many different colors in the center.
ARTISTS:
I am blending the many layers of pencil colors as I go. If I’m not attaching those layers to existing pencil build-up as I work, there could be an “edge” between the different patches of color on the forehead. I don’t want that, I want them to blend smoothly. Any artist who has worked with layering colored pencil knows how delicate an operation that can be.
Blending: You can see some of my initial layers (in the picture above) because the pencil strokes are visible. Like that open patch of grey paper on the right side of the forehead. You can see the initial layers of cream pencil (the wrinkle lines) and dark mauve and rust-red (the dark area on the upper right). As I build layers of flesh colors, I gradually “smear” the pencil together into a smooth substance that looks like smooth skin. (The next pic shows the result)
6
I’ve blended, or “smeared” enough pencil colors together to make smooth skin on the left side of the forehead.
You can see that the very light cream pencil that made prominent “wrinkles” across Larry’s forehead (in the previous pic), are now buried under/within other pencil colors (pinks and peaches) which have toned them down and blended them into smooth-looking skin.
7
Larry’s forehead finished.
If you look at the remaining area of grey paper in the previous pic (right side of forehead), you can see how I had put down the first layer of pencils: very light cream to give the indication of “forehead wrinkles”, and some light gold. I don’t want skin to come out too yellow. But in the reference photo I did see a touch of gold to the skin colors in places. So I put down a very light, muted, gold there, and then layered my peach and pink colors on top of them to build up the correct colors to finish off the forehead. In this finished picture, the cream is not as light, and the gold is not as yellow, as in the previous pic, because of the layers of peach, dusty rose, and mauve I’ve added on top of them. And then smeared it all together by building up the pencil layers thickly enough that the top pencil (a particular orangey-peach) “smears” those layers into one smooth gradation of color.
An artist has to have enough experience with colored pencils to know exactly how thickly to make the layers to end up in that place. Too few or too lightly, and the grey paper will show through. (The skin will not look luminous.) Too many layers, or pencil applied too heavily, and the artist will just be smearing wax pigment around long before he has added his final color; the wax buildup won’t accept any more color.
“Cheri and Larry” - A double portrait of the client and her beloved late husband, in progress.
🎨 Prismacolor pencil on "Felt Grey" Canson Mi-Teintes paper.
20 x 24 inches.
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