Elora Painting - Part 4 - Draw Paint Academy

Before I get into it, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I’m a bit behind with the updates on this one. So I’m going to try to make up some ground.

In Parts 1 and 2, I established and refined the background. In Part 3, I established the body and clothes. Here’s where I left it at the end of Part 3:

Now, in Part 4, I’ll complete the color block-in so that the whole surface has some color.

Head, Hair, and Hat

I started this session by mapping out the general colors of her head and hair.

For her head, I used a fairly rich and dark orange color. I gently scumbled this color over the surface, creating a timid and partially translucent layer. This makes the color appear lighter than it really is, as it allows some of the white surface to show through. This also allowed me to keep the initial drawing somewhat visible.

She has some hair flowing out from the bottom of her hat and across her ear. I used a darker and warmer color for this. I believe it was a mixture of raw umber, magenta, yellow ochre, and titanium white.

The hat plays a prominent role. It’s a wonderful display of color, light, and design. The areas in light appear crisp and bright, and the areas in shadow are full of different blues, reds, and purples. At this stage, I just focused on the major light and dark shapes. I ignored all the intricate contours and designs. I’ll add them in later. It’s always better to focus on the foundation first, and only once you are satisfied with that, should you move on to the more intricate details. If you jump ahead, you might get yourself in a mess.

Facial Features and Reflected Light

The initial drawing, still somewhat visible through the paint, serves as a good placeholder for now. I won’t do any more with the facial features. I’ll go back over them later with a fine brush and a near-black color. I do add a hint of warmth around the lips and some reflected light bouncing off parts of her face. For the reflected light, I use a clean brush with a touch of solvent to lift paint from the surface, making those areas appear lighter. I would say the reflected light is the most important and challenging aspect of her face. It needs to appear as a soft, warm glow on her face. But it must still appear as part of the shadow; it cannot be too light.

Elora Part 4, Reflected Light Detail, 700W

Check Values Are on Track

To wrap up this session, I took a photo of the painting and looked at it in grayscale on my phone. I then compared this to a grayscale of the reference photo. I do this often throughout the painting process to confirm I’m on track with the values. It’s not a perfect test, but it’s good enough to spot major errors. In this case, all seems to be going okay. The neck needs to be a touch darker, and the lights obviously need to be bumped up, but everything else is not far off the mark.