Portrait experimentations - pencil, prismacolor pencil and paints

I created this portrait using Prismacolor pencils. This took me around 2 hours to do.  I am not overly pleased with the outcome of this portrait. This reason being because I found it difficult to give the face a smooth appearance, as you are able to see the lines from the different shades of colour in the portrait. I think this was my fault, as I should of focused on doing one small section of the face at a time. Also, because this is a large scale portrait (A4) I found it hard to add much detail. If I was to do another Prismacolor pencil portrait, I would consider creating the portrait at a smaller scale.  

I completed this small drawing of part of my brothers face in around 20 minutes, using Prismacolor pencils. when doing this I found that it is easier to add details and more accuracy in smaller scale portraits than large ones.

I completed this drawing of my brothers eyes in around 30 minutes.

This is a portrait I did of my little brother only using pencil and an eraser. this took me around 3 and a half hours to complete. Whilst doing this drawing, I found it very easy to add depth and tone into the portrait, as well as shadows, depending on how much pressure I put down onto the pencil. To add the highlights around the nose and on the forehead, I used an eraser and then slightly blended the blank space into the pencil slightly, to make it look more natural and realistic. I found this to look really effective, and noticed it made the portrait instantly look more three dimensional. I found this a lot easier to complete compared to using the Prismacolor pencils, as a result of the normal pencils being very easy to blend, and I am also able to only use a couple of pencils, where as with the coloured pencils I had to use a lot of different shades of pencil, and had to be more precise on where I put the colours, to make sure it looked correct. With the pencil portrait I was able to correct it with the eraser if a mistake was to happen, however I was unable to erase the mistakes I made when doing the Prismacolor pencil portrait.

This is a portrait I completed of my Grandad, using Prismacolor pencils. Due to me finding it difficult to add details and accuracy in a large scale portrait using these pencils, I decided to create this portrait at a slightly smaller scale. I took my own advice from the last portrait I did using these pencils, and focused more on one area at a time.

I also did this portrait of my mum at a smaller scale (just under the size of A4), and as a result of her skin colour being a lot lighter than my granddads, I found it a lot more difficult to find and use the correct skin tone colour pencils, and found it hard to find pencil colours which are in the same shade range, to highlight and contour the face.  

I drew and coloured this portrait using prismacolour pencils. I was really happy with how this turned out, for the flowers I used acrylic paints and found them really easy to use and i was impressed with how vibrant the flowers turned out to be. This has made me want to use and experiment more with acrylic paints.

I created this small scale eye and nose portrait of my little brother using acrylic paints. I found it really easy to find the right skin tones to use, and enjoyed how I was able to layer many shades, shadow and highlights once each layer had dried. This took me around 15- 20 minutes to complete.