Annie portrait in progress 7 - How to fade the bottom edge

Making a fade-out at the bottom of a head-study portrait can be tricky. Sometimes I use Photoshop on the client’s reference photo (or on my layout if I’m combining more than one photo) so I can see where to make the fade out. How far down the neck or body to start the fade so it makes a pleasing overall composition with the subject’s face as the most important feature. Sometimes I fade out the bottom very carefully, as though the realistic detail is becoming fainter and fainter toward the bottom until it disappears into the background color. Other times I make rough “scribbles” to fade the subject from highly realistic detail to “not realistic detail”, just the obvious use of the medium the artist is working with. 

For Annie’s portrait I planned to fade down the realistic detail gradually. 

1

First I completed the detailed texture of her coat “at full strength” - covering the paper with full pressure on my pencils just as I had throughout her head and collar - down to the point where I expected to begin the fade. Notice I’ve got a nice rounded curve to the bottom of her coat in this pic. From there I will fade that same curve downward an equal distance all along it’s curved bottom edge. About 2-3 inches in this case.

2

Working on the fade-out.

I faded Annie’s coat texture by using lighter and lighter pressure with my colored pencils as I went downward. But I also did it by choosing colors that were closer and closer to my background color. That would be the same regardless of what background paper color you are working on. 

3

After I completed that fade, I taped the artwork up on my studio wall and stood back to look at it, as I always do when I finish a portrait. I saw that I had made the right foreleg come downward too strongly. In Pic 2 you can see that it stands out more. I did that because that leg is forward more toward the viewer. It made sense to me. 

When I stood back to look at it, I saw that leg was too prominent. It pulled the eye downward like an arrow pointing at the bottom of the artwork. So with an eraser I smudged the bottom of that leg up a bit, lightening it, and with my pencils I lightly and carefully evened out the bottom of the fadeout until I was happy with it. An artist can only judge that when standing back at the distance a viewer might see the finished artwork hanging on a wall. At my worktable I am too close to see the whole composition.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Felt Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper. 18 x 23 inches.

"Annie" in progress

Commissioned by Carolyn Martini, Gloria Kehoe, and Tammy Cunningham.