Thursday, January 6, 2011

Portrait of Elaina


After working on the portrait of my niece, Samantha, I decided to try my luck with a portrait of another niece, Elaina. Elaina is 3 years old in this photo and she lives in Arizona so her skin is always a bit tan. Her olive complexion is unlike Samantha's creamy skin so I find myself using all different pencils. As you can probably tell, I was really intrigued with her hair and began at the top. I think I used every brown plus some warm yellows and purples. For her skin, I began by putting a layer of Prismacolor 939 Peach on her skin. Then Mineral Orange, Rosy Beige, Clay Rose, Blush Pink, Burnt Ocher, Henna, Luminance Manganese Violet, Chestnut, Periwinkle and I'm far from being finished. The biggest challenge I'm finding is to capture her olive skin tones without making her skin look like wood. I am cautiously layering skin tone colors!

1 comment:

Sue Clinker said...

What a lovely model!
You've made a lovely job of her hair and I look forward to watching progress.