August 20
The last portrait I shared (a dog in a forest scene) was very complex. This one will be straightforward: a double Head Study of two people who were married for 57 years, commissioned by the wife, Cheri McNealy, after the loss of her beloved husband Larry, 8 months ago.
I have known Cheri for 33 years. She was instrumental in introducing my artwork to the Doberman community in 1991, and has been one of my biggest fans and supporters ever since.
Those who know Cheri know that she is an eloquent writer. She shared many memories of Larry with me to help me capture his essence. It’s hard to know which to share with you. So I’ll start with how they met….
Cheri's words are below the picture.
This is the initial outline drawing made with light and dark colored pencil on grey Canson paper.
From Cheri:
“I fell in love with his eyes on the night we met, at the Enlisted Men's Club at the Naval Training Center in San Diego. They were the only thing that left a good impression because he was out with the guys and snockered to the max. I would see him drunk only one other time in our 57 years together, but that is a different story.
I'd been hired to work the Chow Line at Coronado Naval Amphibious Base (cuz I wanted to meet sailors!) and a couple of weeks after our initial introduction, he came through my line, early in the morning and definitely sober. Once again, I fell in love with his beautiful blue eyes which I noticed before I really even saw his face! He looked up at me and smiled...
...and I watched where he sat down, then decided it was 'now or never': time to fill his napkin dispenser, replenish the salt and pepper shakers, check the catsup bottle and write my phone number down on a napkin and carefully place it on top of his cantaloupe before I returned to the chow line.
That was the beginning...he called me that night and I broke a date with a very handsome Russian born NCO who had a red convertible Corvette. The Corvette was very interesting and so was he - however, neither of them had Larry's blue eyes.”
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 2
These steps show how I created Cheri’s curly “Afro-shaped” hairstyle, from a reference photo where her hair was not visible.
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This is the original photo. As you can see, there is no way to make out the shape or details of Cheri’s hairstyle. She sent some photos taken at different times, but none of them showed the style she had when this photo was taken.
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First, using Photoshop, I blocked out the background to make the basic shape of Cheri’s hair. She likes her hairstyle to be “round” (like an Afro). So I indicated that with a circle in the correct place, to guide me. (You will see I sketched that circle on my initial outline drawing.)
Cheri found some photos of models online with curly hair similar to hers. I’ve added a piece of one of them on the left side of her head. Her hair is very dark brown, but that photo shows me the curl shapes I need to aim for.
I will make some better curls on her forehead also.
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Getting started in the studio.
My reference photo is on the monitor, with the Photoshop modifications I made. Large, so I can see details. To the left of the main photo are two pics of models with curly hair. The lower one is the one I used for the left side of Cheri’s hair. The upper one is what I’m using as reference for her bangs. On the right are 3 photos of a younger Cheri — with different hair, but I’m using them as reference because they show her accurate dark-brown hair color.
The pencils I’m using are laid out on a sheet of white paper. I’m working on grey Canson paper that has the outlines of the figures drawn on it.
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I started at the lower left, on the neck, and worked clockwise around her head. You can see the faint outline of the “circle” that indicates the outer edges of the hairstyle.
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The shapes go from very pale grey - the highlights on the curls, to black in the shadows between curls, with many shades of brown and gray to make the the shapes of the curls.
Cheri’s hair is very dark brown, what you might call a “black-brown”, which doesn’t have a lot of color in it. But I’ve added some chocolate and rust in the curls to give it interest and life. Otherwise, the pencils I’m using are warm greys, dark sepia brown, and black.
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Cheri’s “round” hairstyle finished.
Using the photo of the model with curly hair to start the left side of Cheri’s hair gave me an understanding of how to do curls. From there I progressed by looking at the two models’ photos at the same time as the reference photo of Cheri, to create a nice hairdo of “soft curls” as she wanted.
When Cheri saw this in-progress picture, she wrote,
“It looks awesome - you GOT IT just right!!! But then, I knew you would.”
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 3
What color is skin color?
How does an artist know which colored pencils to use when portraying a human face?
This post shows the method I’ve invented for myself.
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With my reference photo open in Photoshop, I sample colors in various places on the face. Those are the squares you see directly on Cheri’s face. That is a separate layer in Photoshop, overlaying the photo, which I can switch on and off.
After I’ve made all those color swatches on her face, I copy that layer and move it over to the left of her face (keeping all the swatches in the same configuration as on the face). Now it’s on the neutral grey that is the same color as the paper as I’m working on. That allows me to really see what color pencils I’ll need and how those colors will look on the grey paper.
That’s my “map” of the colors on Cheri’s face.
The pink ones in the center are her lips.
And the “white” one in the center of those is her teeth color. (It’s actually a pale cream.)
These colors are unique to Cheri’s face. The swatches for Larry’s face will be a little different.
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Looking at the swatches I made in Photoshop on my monitor, I pick out my pencil colors to match them. I make these charts of swatches with those pencils on scraps of the same paper I’m working on (“Felt Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes) with the pencil names, to guide me in picking up the right color while I’m working.
These are the colors I’ll use when working on the skin of Cheri’s face.
The last 4 colors on the right-hand scrap are the colors I’ll use for Cheri’s hazel eyes.
For each portrait I create, these swatches-scraps for that particular portrait will be unique to that portrait.
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In the studio:
My “map” of skin-colors is on the monitor to the left of Cheri’s photo. The pencil colors I’m using are on a piece of clean white paper directly above the part of the artwork I’m working on, where I can grab them quickly. My swatches-scraps, a reference for which pencil to grab, are next to the pencils.
Pencil sharpener to the right, drafting brush to the left. All my tools near to hand where I can use them quickly. Clean white paper covers the artwork except the part I’m working on.
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Cheri's forehead and eyebrows finished, and working my way down the cheeks and nose.
The swatches I sampled with Photoshop to see accurate colors are a “crutch”, a tool to help the artist. An artist who develops an eye for color can pull out the correct pencils to use, without Photoshop. I did for years, and still can. But sometimes the colors in a face will surprise you.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 4
I’m making good progress on Cheri’s face.
I have known Cheri for 33 years. She was instrumental in introducing my artwork to the Doberman community in 1991, and has been my biggest fan and promoter ever since. I would not be as well-known in the dog world as I am, across the U.S. and Canada, if not for Cheri.
I'm so well-known for dog portraits a lot of people don't know I do humans too! I specialized in the human figure in my artwork for galleries for more than 15 years before I got into Dobermans.
Every portrait I do is a love story. This one is about a couple who loved eachother for 57 years.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 5
Continuing work on Cheri's face...
FOR ARTISTS:
Lots of color and value transitions that are subtle, and they all blend from one into another. It's tricky to get that right. While maintaining the correct shapes of her face that make Cheri look like "her".
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I put in the dark corner of Cheri’s mouth and the adjoining lip so I could orient myself with all those different color shapes that make up her cheek, the side of her face, and the area below her nose.
That helps me know where I'm at as I layer those colors and blend them as smoothly as possible. It’s easy to lose track of where all those patches of color go…as one color transitions into another. The corner of the mouth, which is such a clear shape, and the two vertical creases to the left of that, are like landmarks that help me understand what I’m working on as I add all the different colors that make up the skin shapes.
It’s important to always keep in mind the anatomy of a face also. The colors are not random. They are the highlights and shadows of the forms of Cheri’s face.
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In the previous picture you can see I was adding the highlight that comes in a long curve down the front of the left cheek and around the side of the mouth to the left side of the chin, with cream pencil. That’s my base layer. Then I add the other colors in around that highlight, blending them into it as I go.
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I continue working my way around the mouth, continuing the upper lip toward the right to the dark right corner of the mouth — another landmark. Then I can bring a similar cream-colored highlight down the right cheek and around the side of the mouth, blending all the skin colors that adjoin it. As you see here.
From there I work my way across the bottom lip. You can see I’ve added a highlight (her shiny lip-gloss in the reference photo) on the bottom lip. Another “landmark” that helps me know where I’m at with the big pink curve of the bottom lip….continuing to build colors that adjoin that landmark and “attach” them to it.
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A close-up that shows the smooth blending of the pencils. Some colored pencil artists apply many layers, with light pressure. I use firm pressure, to completely fill the tooth of the paper. I don’t want any of that grey showing through these skin tones. There are times I use the grey paper as a color in my subject. But I didn’t want it in this face.
My previous portrait of the dog “Shasta” in a forest scene, is an example of how I used the color of the grey paper throughout the artwork: in the tree trunks, Shasta's coat, and the wooden bridge.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 6
Cheri's lips are finished and I'm ready to start on the teeth. Teeth are really hard to do. I don't know why that is, but I have found them to be so. The writer Hunter Thompson described the teeth in one particular artwork as looking “like jellied baseballs". I often think of that quote. It's hard to get teeth to not look like jellied baseballs.
I think I’ll put them off until tomorrow. I made good progress today, and I am happy with it. (Lips are hard to do too.)
The swatches-scrap on this picture shows the pencil colors I used for the lips.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 7
When I shared my opinion about doing about teeth on Facebook, Cory H. commented. I thought his comment and my reply would be of interest to artists.
Cory:
This looks great so far. Teeth are really hard. Lockard, the artist I studied pastel portrait painting with, would urge us to avoid toothy smiles, and I think it’s true you don’t see many smiling portraits. When it’s come up for me I try to play down the brightness, keep the teeth well below the “whites” of the eyes and highlights on the face. I’m really looking forward to your solution in this piece!
Kevin:
Years ago I was a member of the Portrait Society of America, and there was an extreme prejudice in that organization against ever showing teeth. The culture was that portraits should only be done from life, not photos, and when a subject is sitting for hours for a portrait, they can't possibly hold a convincing smile for that period of time. It was only when I was thinking about the caption for this post that it suddenly occurred to me there might be another reason (which nobody talked about), which is that not many artists could do teeth very well.
Cory, you are absolutely right about keeping the brightness of the teeth below the "whites" of the eyes and skin highlights. I use cream pencil blended with a very pale warm grey ("French Grey 10% and 20% in Prismacolor pencils). The part I struggle with that makes them look like "baseballs", is trying to portray the dark "line" between each tooth. Delineating each tooth from the next one. It makes the person look like they are holding a row of white gumballs in their mouth. Having learned that lesson the hard way, I'll be very careful not to do that in this portrait.
Here’s today’s work with Cheri’s teeth finished. I’m happy with the result.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 8
Finished Cheri’s face and neck.
Reflected light is important. These blue and grey colors on her jaw and side of her neck were caused by the reflected light from Larry's blue t-shirt.
Larry's shirt isn't finished yet, but when the portrait is finished, these colors on Cheri's skin will look accurate. That's part of what creates "realism" in artwork.
In the studio:
The pencil colors I’ve been using for Cheri’s face are above the artwork where I can grab them quickly, along with swatches of those colors on a scrap of grey paper. The blue and blue-grey (cool grey) pencils I used to create the blue shades are next to her face where I’m working.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 9
I'm starting on Larry now, beginning with his brown hair. Like Cheri’s hair, that part of the assignment was a bit of a challenge. In the few photos I have of him, Larry’s hair looks almost black. But Cheri told me it was much lighter, a medium brown.
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I put in hair highlights first, then add the darker browns in around them: the shadowed spaces between the locks of hair. I also run a light-brown pencil (raw umber) softly “over” the highlights, blending the pencil colors a bit so there won’t be too much contrast between the lights and darks.
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Continuing on across the hairstyle, left to right, doing the highlights first, then the darks, then blending and softening with mid-tone browns. These are the brown and grey pencils I’m using.
I had to do the upper edge of Larry’s forehead as I went, so I have something to anchor the hair to.
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In the few photos I have of him, Larry’s hair looks very dark, almost black. But Cheri told me it was much lighter, a medium brown. She sent a photo of their grandson Luke and said, “Luke’s hair is the color of Larry’s hair.” So on my monitor for reference I have photos of Larry that show how he wore his hair, and in the upper right is a photo of Luke for hair color.
The pencils I’m using for Larry’s hair are directly above where I’m working. The other pencils are the ones I am using for the faces. And off in the upper corner of my work table are the colors I used for Cheri’s lips. I don’t need those for a while, until I get to Larry’s mouth. At the far right is my trusty, hard-working, electric pencil-sharpener.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 10
This is how “Cheri and Larry” looks now, as I start working on Larry. To help me capture his essence, Cheri shared many memories of Larry with me. Here’s one:
“People who know us will immediately note that the photo was taken a long time ago - but it was the only one that radiated our love and the happiness we had together - doing anything. Mostly nothing to write home about - just day to day stuff, hanging out, hunting for the best banana-split maker in San Diego during our first year of marriage (and YES, we found him!)...going to a movie...enjoying the chimes in the backyard with Larry always on the lookout for humming birds. He found a litter of 3 nesting in one of the legs of the cat chime - God, he was so excited. They all survived and the following year, the mother returned and had a second group of babies - all but one made it. There I go again…”
When an artist does a portrait, we don’t just capture a likeness, we capture a lifetime.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 11
Working on Larry’s face now.
An ear is a funny-looking thing. But it’s just a collection of shapes and colors, like anything else in a painting or drawing. Nothing to be afraid of.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 12
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.
These 7 pics show step-by-step how I made the eyebrows and forehead, creating smooth, luminous skin.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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)
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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.
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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 portrait in progress 13
Capturing Larry’s blue eyes is the most critical part of this portrait. When we were discussing the layout of the portrait, Cheri wrote:
“I just noticed how much the color of his shirt looks like his eyes...
Oh those eyes....I think I fell in love with them first and was mesmerized by them, every time I looked at them - for the next 57 years!"
In this close-up you can see the difference between my sketched outlines of an eye (on the right) and the finished eye. I used blue pencil for the iris in my outline drawing because getting a clear blue in this portrait is really important. I didn’t want any other pencils to muddy the colors I was planning to use for Larry’s blue eyes.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 14
I sent this in-progress picture to Cheri and wrote,
“When I was working on Larry's eyes I tried to capture his sense of humor. I'm glad you told me about that. About the rock cows, and the watch frogs….❤️”
Below the picture is what Cheri had told me.
“Larry had a truly funny sense of humor...he couldn't tell a joke to save his life - always got hung up adding details that didn't matter so people would get impatient waiting for the punch line - but he came up with stuff he made up that simply cracked everybody up! For example - one spring when the male frogs were out in full force croaking their heads off in hopes of finding a female...he claimed they were actually "Watch frogs". They were croaking after long periods of silence to let us know something (like a burglar) was in our backyard. Once he got going with his little creation, he couldn't stop. Soon he was talking about the "Protection Trained Frogs", who had to go to Frog Seal School for training...there were special leashes for graduate Watch Frogs and the owners of those highly specialized protectors had to have a Certificate of Watch Froggyness in order to be able to order those leashes. On and on it went - for YEARS.
One time we were driving along the freeway and he looked up on the hill ahead of us and pointed out a big brown cow. I said it wasn't a cow. It was a rock. And he said, "It's a rock cow. Out there by himself, waiting for the rain so he can get the dirt off his rock fur". Every time we saw a bunch of rocks, it was a "herd of rock cows, a very special breed - they don't give milk or beef - they just hang out decorating the hills"....that never ended either.
He always made me laugh with his wild imagination - but never at his jokes. I just wanted him to "get on with the punch line" and that wasn't his strong point!
So many wonderful memories…”
I believe it’s important
for a portrait artist to get to know the subject they are portraying, before starting a portrait. That helps me capture the essence of who they really were. There are tiny, subtle differences in the way I put in the pencil strokes when working on their facial features, knowing that person (or pet) had an intense personality, or a funny wit, or a sweetness that their partner loved. With Larry, the whole time I was working on his eyes, and the skin around his eyes, I held in my mind that his wife loved his funny sense of humor. There are subtle differences in the colors and shapes of eyes that are smiling with affection, for example, vs smiling because that person has a silly joke up their sleeve!
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 15
Working on Larry’s bottom lip: These three pictures show how I add the patches of color for his skin and lip. Then I blend them together (“burnish”) with a specific top color to smooth them out.
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In step 5, while working on Cheri’s face, I described how I start with cream pencil for the highlights on the skin. In this pic you can see how I’ve put in the highlights of Larry’s bottom lip and part of his chin. Then added patches of the colors that adjoin those…
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Now I’ve added the patches of color for his lip, going up to the darker bits where the lip folds inward toward the teeth. But neither the skin nor lip looks as smooth as I want it.
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Using Prismacolor “Flesh” (the color in the swatch at lower right) I rub the colors together. Those who have worked with Prismacolor pencils (a wax based pencil) know how when you build up a certain thickness of color layers, you can “smear” the colors together a bit, with a top color. Wax-based pencils are not chalky like pastel where you can smear it a lot just by rubbing with your finger. Prismacolors don’t really smear like that. But to a certain extent, when the wax (with color pigment in it) has been built up to a certain thickness, you can use another color to rub the colors together just enough that it smooths them out.
For the entire 40+ years of my career, I’ve found that this “Flesh” Prismacolor pencil is the perfect color to blend the patches of other colors together for (Caucasian) human skin. On Larry’s lip I used a slightly pinker pencil to blend the pinks, mauves, and reddish-brown patches into a smooth lip.
Prismacolor “Flesh” was discontinued years ago, and I am down to my last 2-inch stub of it. Oh no! Oh no! OH NO! 😮 If anybody has this color to sell, I would love to get my hands on it!
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 16
Larry’s smile and most of his face finished.
His beard color (“5 o'clock shadow”) is very close to the grey of the paper. I built up the colors on his chin by layering different color pencils, the same as I did with the rest of his face. But I could also have left the grey paper showing and just applied some “flesh colors” very lightly to tone it a bit.
That section of rust-brown by his ear looks shocking because it's so dark. It will make more sense when I finish the transition along the jaw from the (highlighted) chin to the shadowed side of his face.
Cheri wrote:
“Larry liked people and would go out of his way to help anybody who needed it.
He never squawked about what he 'could have' been doing instead. He didn't usually wait to be asked for help either ... when he knew it was needed, he jumped in with both feet. He found an outlet for that attribute by volunteering for years with the Solano County Sheriff's Department and with the Office of Emergency Services. He has a binder full of certifications he earned so he could be on the 'front lines' with law enforcement and first responders and another binder full of commendations from them and for the SAR (Search and Rescue) groups he joined and served with over two decades.
To him, his family and the chosen friends who became part of his family - were more important than anything to him. He always put them first and foremost in his life. His unconditional love and devotion for them was never-ending. He gave his all and his best to those lucky people - myself included. Nothing was too much to ask. We all have a choice about how we will live our lives - and this is how he chose to live his...and he never wandered from it.
Blessed were those of us he loved - friends and family alike.”
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 17
Both heads finished now.
Whew! The hard part is done.
Cheri wrote:
“With this glorious work of art of us - with his eyes shining the way they did when I fell in love with them and then with him - I never have to think about that 'one last time' again...never have to dwell on the regret of not having had that 'one last' look - because now, I can see them anytime I want ... see our happiness...see our love for each other...and in the portrait, he's alive and we have many years of everything that mattered in the world to us, still waiting ahead.”
It’s been a long slow road, but both faces are finally finished. I love the look when there’s just a completed face emerging 3-dimensional out of that flat grey of the background paper.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 18
I used watercolor wash to add the big chunks of color for their t-shirts and something difficult to do: the grey fadeout in the shape of a heart all around them.
Things didn’t go as planned. 😱
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I’ve started putting in the guide lines for their t-shirts, with the appropriate pencil colors. Cheri’s shirt will be a solid bright red, Larry’s a blue to match his eyes. Both are large areas of solid color. To do that, and save myself a lot of work coloring those solid colors with pencils, I’ll do a watercolor wash in red and blue, as an underpainting, then add the folds and highlights of the shirts on top of that with colored pencil. In this pic I’m putting in the dark lines of the folds. When I do the watercolor wash, those lines will show through.
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All of the shirt folds and guide-lines for shadowed areas have been put in.
I erased the lines below their shirts that indicated the heart so that I can barely see them. I don’t want those to show through the watercolor wash I’m going to put there to make the darker heart-shaped vignette. I needed the heart shape visible as I’ve been working on their portrait so I could judge how the hair and face color is working visually with the heart border. Particularly now that I’m down to the t-shirts. Because, unlike the faces, the shirts will have to fade into the grey vignette. That will be a little tricky. The bright red and blue shirts have to fade out at the bottom, and at the same time the dark heart vignette around them has to fade outward from the grey of the paper to a much darker charcoal-grey.
Now I’m ready for adding large areas of watercolor. A chunk of red, a chunk of blue, and (hopefully) a nice smooth heart-shaped gradation from grey to much darker grey, all around the outside edges of the whole piece.
Up to now, the only medium on this artwork is colored pencil.
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First I put in the watercolor underpainting for their shirts. That was easy and straightforward. I let the red and the blue run together a bit near the bottom. Joined at the heart, these two. ❤️
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Now the heart shaped vignette. The white paper protects their faces from possible paint splash, or - god forbid - a dropped paintbrush.
I made 3 mixtures of water with black paint, each one with more paint than the last, to make progressively darker greys. My plan was to wet the paper and let each heart-shaped band of grey flow smoothly into the next, as wet-in-wet watercolor will do.
Things don’t always turn out the way an artist envisions them. (As every artist knows.) This smooth transition from the grey of the paper to the much darker grey at the edges, didn’t go so well.
That’s the fault of two things: Canson Mi-Teintes paper is not a watercolor paper. (If it was, it wouldn’t have buckled this badly from being wet.) On watercolor paper, a w.c. artist can make smooth washes because they can wet the paper, and “flow” the paint into the wetness where it will spread — evenly, if the artist has the skill to do that. The paper stays wet long enough to achieve that smooth transition. But Canson paper is extremely absorbent. Almost as soon as I’ve wet the paper, it absorbs the water. I couldn’t even grab my loaded brush quickly enough to flow the first band of grey into the wetness, or each darker shade of grey smoothly into the previous one. Each band dried before I could even finish my stroke all the way around the heart. That caused blocky steps between each shade of grey — as you see. Not what I envisioned.
The second reason for the failure is I am not a watercolor artist. I’ve used w.c. it for years for underpainting, but I don’t have the skill of a w.c. artist who works in that medium all day every day like I do with pencils.
But I think even the most skilled w.c. artist would have trouble getting a smooth wash on this paper. ☹️
5
So this was as good as I could get my “smooth” transition with the heart vignette. Yuck. All that work with their faces - days and days of painstaking work - which came out so beautifully….and now I’ve ruined it with this ugly wash. I shut down my studio (and went to bed this night) with disappointment.
But wait! Colored pencils to the rescue. I can fix that…I hope. It would have been nice if this day’s work would have resulted in a smooth, perfect fade-out vignette. I can put down an amount of color with a big paintbrush in a few strokes that would have taken hours and hours to do with little colored pencil strokes. This has given me a lot of dark grey around the edges though. Something that would have been a lot of work with dark grey pencil. Can I smooth out those ugly, clunky-looking bands of lighter and medium grey and make a smooth blend into the dark grey? Can I cover them well enough with pencil to fix that? And make the pencil transition look smooth? (Not easy to do with small pencil-points on large transitions.)
Tomorrow will tell.
The damp paper has to dry overnight.
6
With a lot of erasing, I was able to “lift” much of that sharp band of grey closest to the faces. I was surprised, because paint pigment usually stains the paper fibers and it’s not possible to erase it. This softened the transition somewhat. It’s still not a smooth, beautiful vignette that I want. The shirts don’t fade out nicely at the bottom. And the heart looks lopsided. Now I’ll get to work with colored pencil. First, their t-shirts. Then I’ll spend quite a few hours on the vignette.
But first, there was a fun surprise in my studio while working on that ill-fated watercolor vignette…..
7
When I went to wash up my brushes I threw my painting apron over this stool. When I came back and looked at it I noticed something....
Cheri McNealy is an avid seamstress. She is well known in the dog world for her beautiful custom-made “toties”. Years ago Cheri - one of my biggest fans - made this studio apron and sent it to me as a gift. It’s made from a dog-patterned fabric and the ties have dog footprints on them. It usually hangs on a peg in my studio. I must not have looked at the inside of the apron for many years, and I had forgotten that it has an inscription handwritten in a bottom corner. But this day it happened to fall in such a way that the writing showed. This day that I painted the heart around Cheri’s and Larry’s faces:
For the Master Artist
“Kevin”
From the Master Seamstress
“Cheri”
August 2007
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 19
In my previous post I shared what a mess I made of the heart-shaped vignette. (The watercolor-wash-gone-wrong.) I’ve been working on it for two days with colored pencils over the watercolor, and I have to say I am very pleased with how I was able to rescue it. This is what I originally envisioned. Just couldn’t achieve it with watercolor alone.
I still have their shirts left to do, it's just red and blue watercolor underpainting on the shirts now. I'll be adding the folds and highlights with colored pencil. And there will be something deeply meaningful about the shirts.
It’s really important to me to get this portrait “perfect”. Cheri has been a generous and loyal friend, one of my biggest fans for the past 30 years, and one of the most devoted promoters of my work within the Doberman community.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 20
A portrait artist can often include things that are deeply meaningful to the client, which are not there in the reference photo. There will be something particularly meaningful about each of their t-shirts that Cheri wanted included: a shirt-patch that was not in the original photo, which tells a lot about Larry.
About the patch on her own t-shirt Cheri wrote:
“I hadn't thought about the ‘I Love to Sew’ patch for me
too thoroughly until I was reading over your paragraph about it...and it dawned on me that Larry ALWAYS encouraged me to buy more fabric, buy my "dream" machine, go shopping to get anything I wanted/needed - on sale or not - and he always drove me wherever I was going to satisfy my 'addiction'. <LOL> That's why I have 3 rooms full of fabric and sewing shit and two great machines - the last one I bought sold for $15,000 brand new and I got it for a little over $3,000 (used but very little!) from the guy who has serviced my machines for 30+ years.
Larry ”renovated" Sarah's bedroom for me after she left to get married. Turned it into a 'dream' sewing room that I've used almost every day since he finished it. Everything I asked for - he made for me - and as much as he hated (I mean H.A.T.E.D.!) painting and wallpapering - he painted the room a light blue from the middle of the wall down and a beautiful light cream color from the middle up to the ceiling - then he hung a sewing machine border of wallpaper all the way around the room - in the middle of the two colors he'd painted. He never did anything 'half assed' - he always gave it his best....so "my" room is really mine; made for me. I don't really sew without thinking about him and how he indulged my passion every chance he got.
So the ‘I Love to Sew’ patch says something about me, but even more about him.”
In real life this shirt slogan would be white. But bright white would grab your eye and take attention away from the highlights of their sparkling eyes and happy smiles. So I softened the color to make it fade into the shirt rather than pop out. Instead of white I used two shades of pink and Carmine Red (Prismacolor) which is a light red but not as light as pink. That’s Carmine Red on the bottom curve of Cheri’s shirt collar, done with pencil over the red underpainting. And there’s some in her lips. You’ll notice that Carmine Red looks quite different in those 3 different places. On her lips against the pale colors of her skin, on the collar against the darker red shirt, and in the lettering which is against an even darker, browner red. It forms the word “to” in the “I Love to Sew” lettering. Our eyes will always perceive color differently when they are surrounded by a lighter or darker or cooler/warmer/duller/brighter color.
This is how it looked in the studio working on the t-shirts.
The groups of colored pencils are on their own sheet of paper so I can pull them down toward me when I need that set, with reference swatches near each set.
Red pencils at the top left are for the folds and highlights on Cheri’s red shirt.
Pencils at the top right are for the fade-out to the grey heart-shaped vignette. Blue-greys for the transition from Larry’s blue shirt to grey, and red-browns for the transition from Cheri’s red shirt to grey.
Directly above where I’m actively working are blue pencils for Larry’s shirt and pinks for the slogan on Cheri’s shirt.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 21
It was important to Cheri to have this shirt-patch included on Larry’s shirt. When you read Cheri’s words you’ll understand why.
From Cheri:
“Above all else, Larry was about love.
He ‘liked’ things, certainly - but there really wasn't an 'in between' for him when it came to his feelings. He LOVED the Navy. If we hadn't met, I have no doubt he would have re-enlisted and served all of his life. The Navy was a 'life defining' moment for him and though he always said he had 'no regrets' about returning to civilian life - the Navy was never far from his thoughts. He was beyond proud of the time he served in Vietnam because he was a patriot.
He LOVED this country and was willing to die for it because as he said so many times, it was ‘worth it'."
There was no patch on Larry's t-shirt in the original reference photo. Cheri sent some examples from other shirts and jackets Larry wore. I wanted the shirt slogan to be faint so it wouldn’t take away from the faces. Although they are meant to look like they are printed in white lettering on the t-shirts, Cheri’s shirt patch is actually pink, and Larry’s is light blue. The effect is like “white” printing on their red and blue shirts, but the values are lower (not as bright) as the highlights on their cheeks and in their eyes, and the color of their teeth (see the picture above). That keeps the faces the primary focus, and the shirt patches secondary.
The color bar signifying Vietnam Vets in Larry’s shirt patch is actually (in real life) gold, red, and green. In the picture above, the color bar under the word NAVY appears to be those colors.
But to “fade” it into the blue shirt, gold, red, and green became grey, light purple, and turquoise. That’s because I mixed each of those colors with blue — I chose a pencil color which is as if each of those 3 colors were mixed with blue — so it wouldn’t pop out too much from the blue t-shirt.
Gold + blue = grey.
Red + blue = purple.
Green + blue = turquoise.
This is a close-up of the shirt patch, with swatches showing those 3 colors on blue, and also on grey so you can see exactly what colors they are. When I want to identify the true nature of a color, I view it on neutral grey. Any other color as a background behind a color-swatch will trick your eye, because your perception will be influenced by the way the swatch looks in relation to the background color.
Cheri and Larry portrait in progress 22
A finished portrait is not always perfect.
It’s not unusual for a client to ask that something about a portrait be fixed. Usually just a minor adjustment.
On Cheri’s chin, I had portrayed the shapes and colors I saw in the reference photo. (The "BEFORE" picture on the left.) Cheri asked me to change that oval area on her chin. I don’t have an “egg” shape on my chin, she said. You can clearly see what she’s referring to. I was not happy with that area either.
Cheri's original reference photo. Do you see an egg shape on her chin?
We went back and forth in an email conversation with me asking questions about the shape of her chin because I didn’t have good reference photos. All I had were these. Some looked like she had a cleft chin. In others it looked pointed.
Cheri struggled to answer, it’s hard to describe the shape of a chin. She said:
“I just want the 'egg' look gone - and the yellowish color that kind of draws attention to 'the lump'. <LOL> I don't have a lump.”
She sent a few more reference photos, some of her as a young woman, others taken recently, 50 years later.
“Those are helpful”, I said. “Just a normal, rounded chin.”
Cheri replied, “LOL! Is that all I had to say? ‘Kevin, it’s just a normal rounded chin!’ ”
I shot back, “No, that’s NOT all you had to say (“normal rounded chin”) ! 😛 Normal rounded chins come in all different shapes.”
The photos Cheri sent were critical to seeing the shape of HER chin.
Cheri didn’t notice anything “off” about Larry’s chin, but I did. The bottom of his chin on the left, closest to Cheri’s face, looked too prominent. That would be an easy fix, just add a darker shadow to round it off at the bottom. I didn’t need more reference photos for that.
Before I made any of these changes, I scanned the artwork, and made the changes in Photoshop, so Cheri could see how it would look. On the original, I had built up the layers of colored pencil so thick that adding any additional color on top of them would just smear the existing pencil around. Artists who work with colored pencil will know what I mean. You can’t just “paint over it” like you can with acrylic or oil paintings. By carefully scraping away the top layers of pencil pigment with a sharp blade, I would be able to add one more layer, and if I did it just right, I would end up with the shapes and color I needed. I would have only one shot at that. Colored pencil is an unforgiving medium.
Cheri approved my Photoshop simulation, I made the changes on the original, and the double portrait of Cheri and Larry was finished, after two months of work.
Cheri and Larry portrait finished
I always put my very best into every portrait commission, but for this one I did everything I could to make it perfect. Cheri is a friend I’ve known for over 30 years, who has done more to promote my artwork in the Doberman community than any other single person. She commissioned many portraits to give as gifts over the years, and sent many other clients my way. One of my biggest fans and supporters all these years.
When Cheri received the portrait she wrote:
“What can I say, Kevin? There aren't any words. It's more than I could have hoped for - or expected. That era in our lives when we had the world by the tail - we were 'settled' and happy with one another - we shared a love that only grew stronger with each passing year....all of that is right there, in front of my face - in that portrait. It was always pretty much that way with us. We had some ups and downs but the love was always there, first and foremost and forever.
That you captured our love so perfectly - and the happiness it gave us --- its just remarkable.
There is no one else in this world (or any other!) that I would have trusted to do what you've done for me - because no one else could have. No doubt if Larry were here, he'd say the same thing.
You've given him back to me - given 'us' back to me. My only regret is I should have done it while he was still here so he could love it like I do.
I am forever grateful. And thankful to have found you and been able to call you 'friend' over the years - past, present and future.
THANK YOU.
Love from both of us,
Cheri
“Cheri and Larry”
Larry McNealy - February 12, 1947 - December 23, 2023
Prismacolor pencil and watercolor on “Felt Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper.
20 x 24 inches.
"Cheri and Larry" is a HEAD STUDY portrait, one of my 5 portrait types. You can read about my types of portraits, and see galleries of examples HERE.
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