Initital Ideas

With the older face I was able to show more detail
when drawing the skin because of the wrinkles
and imperfections.
 

I looked at the work of Mark Stewart, a portrait artist who uses pencils rather than paint. I wanted to explore a different media. While researching his work I was particularly drawn to the older faces as I felt they created more texture and tell more of a visual story.



I'm happy with the way I blended the tones and shadows by
using different pencil gradients.

This artist then led me to Nick Lepard an artist who paints portraits by layering colour, creating lines within the different tones. This style of painting shows the worn and rough areas of the faces, similar to those found on older people.












In the two portraits above I used acrylic paint applying it with
a flat brush for the faces. I then used various colours of ink
to create the dark backgrounds.

After researching these artists I decided to focus my project on the elder as I think their faces show more expression and emotion whilst telling a story of experience.

The Initial Research

To start my project I looked at an artist who paints portraits and landscapes of beach and holiday themes. I was particularly drawn to the composition of Stephan Shankland's paintings, he doesn't just concentrate on the human figure but also spends a lot of time on the landscape and backgrounds. Vincent Giarrano is a similar artist who I was attracted to because of the more traditional sceneries. 
Shankland, in contrast to Giarrano, tends to use more vibrant colours to creating a more eye catching painting.



This is a photo of the landscape I painted by Stephan Shankland.
The use of a flat brush enabled me to mix colour and tone while creating texture. 



I used coloured pencils to draw this portrait. I used
 a cross hatch technique to create the shadow on the
face and to give the cheeks more of a three dimensional
realistic look.

The Third artist I researched was Richard Geraint Evans. I wanted to look at a more portrait based painter. I love the way Evans portraits show emotion and how he experiments with different angles of the face. He uses a very realistic technique when painting, with a lifelike colour palette.



This is a painting I did of one of Richard Geraints portraits.
I found painting the faces with a thicker layer of paint easier
then layering up watered down acrylic.

All of the artists above inspired me to take photos while I was on holiday. I wanted to not only focus on the stunning landscapes but I also wanted to capture the natural facial expressions and emotions of different friends and family members.