Raven portrait in progress 2 - What color are these eyes, really?

1

Working on Raven’s eyes - so important in a portrait.

It’s particularly important to get the colors and values accurate in this one, because Raven has such unusual and striking eyes. 

But what color are these eyes, really?

2

To find out I sampled some of the colors in Raven’s eye in the reference photo with Photoshop. and put them on the background paper color.  Now I can get a sense of what colors those actually are, and their relative values compared to the paper color. The colors are barely different from the paper color. I thought the values would be a lot lighter. Didn’t you?

Reference photo by Allison Yap.

3

These are the pencil colors I pulled out to use. I made swatches on the “Sand” Canson paper I’m using, to see how they look on the paper. I want to know how the values compare. The value of the paper will guide me in how much lighter or darker to go in the different parts of Raven’s eye. And also because colored paper changes the color of the pencils that are over it. 

You may notice that these colors are brighter (more saturated) than the sampled swatches on Raven’s reference photo. I will tone these colors down some. But not as much as the reference swatches. To my eye they look brighter than that. An artist’s “eye”, the way we choose to interpret what we see, is more important than a scientific accuracy to digital measurements. 

The digital measurements are a tool. They inform what I see, and guide my pencil choice.

But I am the artist, not my computer. 

4

The finished eye. And some of the surrounding structures - the shapes and values that help me contain and contrast the eyeball itself.

 Nerve wracking. One full day’s work in the studio. But I think I’ve got it right.

5

At work in the studio. Coat colors on the left, eye colors on the right. 

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Sand” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 16 x 20 inches.

Commissioned by Cathy Nearman.

“Raven”

Conant’s Raven Nevermore CDX RN