Skip to main content

50th Anniversary Wall Quilt - Part 3

I haven't done any portrait work in a really long time and I'm glad some of the things I learned came roaring back to me as I worked on these.

I did this picture using nothing but colored pencil and it turned out well since I had a bit of practice on the first 2. This one is much better looking and is a fairly good likeness. I think it'll get a bit better after I get the white veil/dress/tiara and the background tinted.


Dad doesn't look quite so alien like, which is always a bonus! The streaky look of the color pencils though are really bothering me. Especially in dad's black jacket. I'll continue trying to smooth those out and if that doesn't help then I may put on a light wash of black ink to try to smooth it out.

Unfortunately, dad's mouth/lip area isn't all that good but it looks fairly accurate compared to the picture. I think it was a perfect storm so to speak. He's leaning slightly towards mom, head turned towards the camera, a closed mouth smile and there was a bright flash which pretty much made his lips disappear completely and created deep shadows around the upper lip/nose area.

Not sure I'll go for a third drawing. I might though just to see if I can get dad looking a little better. Its usually much easier to fix something from the beginning other than just to fix something after its been drawn. If this was paper I could erase, but I can't since this is on fabric. 

Here's a few close ups:
 



I filled in the background with brown inks. Here's the portrait I painted on white fabric. I call this one my practice fabric.



And here's the one I did on cream fabric.


These portraits turned out really similar, but I think the one on cream fabric looks the best. I darkened some areas on both portraits mainly the mouth/hair/eye areas. Focusing on these features can really make all the difference.

TIP: When drawing eyes/eye brows - Even if your picture just looks like some dark lines for the brows and eye lids, that's really hair. So draw hair/lashes. I couldn't see anything like that from the picture I was working on but adding those little wisps of lashes and hair in the brows really made a big difference.

Here's a close up of mom. Its not a whole lot different from the close up above but darkening the hair around the face and the creases at the lips really make a big difference.


I'm fairly sure my portraits are finished. Sometimes I keep "fixing" something until it's ruined and I really don't want to do that.

I did try to make a portrait just using inks and that was a complete disaster. Guess I'll stick with colored pencils.


Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jacobean Journey Quilt - Trunk Show

On Saturday, January 17, I went to my local quilt shop, Quilt Beginnings, and everyone who made either a Jacobean Journey or Feathered Star quilt last year brought in their projects. Some were finished, close to being finished or still in pieces.  Below is my quilt.  Its brown, cream, peach and a melon like color.  The blocks have been really fun to do and putting all the blocks together have definitely challenged me and some of the other ladies I spoke with. The next two pictures, are of a mother and daughter and their quilts.  They have a similar theme with black, gray, red, white and dark gold color. When asked if they were going to attempt to do the next Hoopsister's embroidery quilt "Sewn Seeds," which there's a sneak peak of at the end, they both said, "Nooooooooooo." Also, these guys say they're novice sewers but I think they've graduated! This lovely lady, did her Jacobean Journey quilt in red, pink, white and a very light blue...
1 comment
Read more

Jacobean Journey Quilt - Outer Border

I've been working on the outer border for a while now and I'm about 75% done.  Out of 44 blocks I've got around 32 done so I'm getting there. I decided not to do a video of these blocks just photos. There's a lot of fabric placement and thread changes and trying to operate a camera at the same time is just begging for something bad to happen. So I decided not to risk it. Here's the border block and corners. They are the smallest blocks I've done for this quilt. The borders are 4.5'x6" and roughly 12K stitches and the corners are 4.5" square with around 9K stitches. Outer Border Corner The outer borders require some accurate piecing first.  The first piece for the corner is strips of fabrics 1 and 4. The second strip is made from fabrics 3, 1 and 4. In the top photo of the square, strip 1 is the white, brown, white and strip 2 is pink, white and brown. To make the square, stitch out your placement area. Then place strip 1, right si...
1 comment
Read more

Jacobean Journey Quilt - Inner Border

Its been several months since we started the quilt as a BOM but since I'm adding on both inner and outer borders, I figure I better get started making those blocks.  The inner border comprises 2 blocks.  I need 36 of one (straights) and 4 of the other (corners) so I'm going to try to do roughly 10 per month or so.  I'll discuss the inner border corner block in another post. Inner Border Block This block I call the "straights." Both of these blocks are different from the rest so far.  For these two blocks you have to piece fabric together BEFORE you begin the block.  The inner block has a diamond pattern in it and you're going to sew 3 strips of fabric together (fabrics 3, 2 and 4) and then line up the seams onto the stitch pattern.  I have found this to be the most difficult step.  Its not really difficult but you have to be very accurate.  You sew the fabric strips together with 1/4" seam and if they're off your seams will not match up, your ...
Post a Comment
Read more