Scout portrait in progress 7 - A different style!

Continuing Scout’s triple portrait. I’ve moved on to the second figure, an action pose - Scout running fast with his Frisbee. This one poses a dilemma: a blurry reference photo. Most people know me for my highly detailed, realistic style. I solved the challenge of using a reference photo that doesn't show any detail, by working in a different, more impressionistic style. The close-up of the pencil strokes in Pic 4 shows what I mean.

A professional artist friend of mine often refers to this look as "painterly”.

It doesn't look like a photograph.

It looks like a work of art. 

1

Since the Frisbee photo I’m using is a low-resolution photo taken from across a field and doesn't have good detail, I plan to do it in a looser style. My usual style is highly detailed and photorealistic, with every hair and whisker accurately depicted. I work very slowly and deliberately. When I do my looser style, I work much more quickly, “dashing” the strokes down on the paper in a more impressionistic way. That works perfectly for Scout’s running Frisbee pose, where I want a feeling of speed and action. 

I get myself set up in the studio on a day when I won’t have any interruptions to finish the whole figure, because I want to keep up my momentum in that style without stopping. For my studio music I wanted something fast-paced and energetic. It’s almost like I am dancing to my pencil strokes when I work. I needed the right soundtrack for Scout running fast with his Frisbee. I played a Spanish Guitar playlist, starting with Behzad’s “Journey”, then continued with Jesse Cook’s “Mario Takes A Walk” — Spanish guitar with clapping and some incredible guitar riffs — and then more Jesse Cook all the way through. Perfect for the speed and energy I wanted for the Frisbee picture. 

2

Cookin’ with Jesse Cook! Fast pencil strokes and fast Frisbee action!

I never let up with my speed portraying this figure. The fast music helped me do that. 

3

I broke a couple pencil points doing this. 😄  I get very vigorous with this style.

4

If you zoom in on the next picture, it shows how I throw down quick jots and dashes of color. Instead of taking care to carefully blend colors so they look photo-realistic, I dash on some brighter colors and just let them stand instead of blending them down more muted with greys and black. That’s one of the characteristics of this looser, faster style I do. I call it my “Little Jewel” style, because of these bright little jewels of color in it, like the red on the top of his neck and blues on the edge of his black coat. Blood-red on the lower edge of the Frisbee.

Instead of keeping my pencils sharpened to the sharpest point possible like I do when I’m portraying fine detail, with this style I use my pencils with dull, flat points, jotting the colors on the way an impressionist painter dabs on brushstrokes of color. 

I was very pleased with how I captured

the expression of joy on Scout’s face. 

5

I was pushing myself a bit by the time I got to the end, but I really wanted to keep up that momentum and do the whole figure all in one go. I am very happy with how it came out. I think I captured Scout's motion and excitement. And I think I caught that gleam in his eye!

You may remember that I made an underpainting of green for the grass around this figure, masking off the two action figures to leave the virgin grey paper. Now you can see the results of doing the black and white dog with colored pencil on the grey paper - rather than over green underpainting - and how that made him pop out of the green. If I had made the underpainting across the figure without masking it off, and then put colored pencil over that, Scout’s white and black areas would have had a greenish cast. Especially his white areas. They would have been light green. 

This post shows all the steps of the masking and underpainting.

Here’s what Annette wrote after seeing this:

“I like the way his frisbee pose seems to be moving - feels like he will shoot across the page! He is "faster than a speeding bullet' as the old Superman intro used to say. His body seems to be built for this movement and this pose really shows it ...hair flying and head leading the drive! I love the accuracy of the depiction of the white in his coat which really is WHITE!!” 

Triple portrait of “Scout”.

(Scout’s Chase RATM RATCh ThD)

Commissioned by Annette Riehle.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil and acrylic wash on “Flannel Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper

20 x 26 inches.

From reference photos by Faith Lyman, Jackie Singer, and Donna Childs.