Star Trek: TNG
Here's a whole mess of little portraits to augment my painting exercise! This is the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, apparently taken quite recently. Perhaps a piece of promotional material for that Picard show? A friend shared the reference image, with its wonderful high-contrast photography and marvelous...
Anna Chlumsky
I was watching Armondo Iannucci's In The Loop, and one of the background players really jumped out at me. Anna Chlumsky held her own in a production all about blistering insults. She must have stood out to Iannucci as well because she got a pivotal role in his follow-up show Veep. She played Amy Bruckheimer, a woman who...
Choi Min-sik
Another quick, sketch-free painting, this time of South Korean actor Choi Min-sik in his unforgettable role as Oh Dae-su in Oldboy. It's a hard-edged movie that calls for a searing portrayal. I cannot think of another actor better suited to that degree of commitment than him. I first took note of him as the bad guy in...
Eugene Hutz
This is a quick shapes-only portrait of singer Eugene Hütz, Ukrainian frontman of gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello. The reference photo was taken from the same concert (and by the same photographer!) as the Regina Spektor shot I painted a few weeks ago. I've been following that band for ages — I just adore them! Such...
In Bruges
Portrait of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the leads from the wonderful In Bruges. As soon as I saw the movie, I fell in love with Martin McDonagh's (the writer) sense of humor. It is dark, but with a weird love for the foibles of human behavior. This was intended to be the groundwork for a painting, but after days...
Bae Doo Na
Another painting in my recent celebrity portrait series, I present South Korean actor Bae Doo Na. Because my subjects are almost always people I admire, I would have expected to get around to her much earlier than this. I love Bae Doo Na's work, and have been following her for many years. The first place I saw her...
Dave Bautista
Another stylized portrait, this one of Dave Bautista as Sapper Morton in Blade Runner 2049. This is another attempt at the brush economy style, this time using a much more opinionated brush than I typically try to use. This one is called Larapuna in Procreate. It is not just textured in both shape and grain, it has...
Jess Bush
Portrait of actor Jess Bush, who plays nurse Chapel in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. She counterpoints Ethan Peck, which is appropriate given the sexual tension the two share on the show. This is a continuation of my brush economy portrait series. In this one, I tried to channel in a bit of Marco Bucci's color notes...
Regina Spektor
Continuing my series of brush economy portraits, I present this monochrome painting of the singer Regina Spektor. I'm not really familiar with her, which is out of character for me. I usually choose subjects I feel a personal connection to, people I like or admire. Inspirations. In her case, I ran into a picture of her...
Ethan Peck
Portrait of Ethan Peck, one of the stars of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. As you can probably guess, he plays Spock. I have really enjoyed the show, and I think he is terrific in the role. This is also the first in a series of painted portraits I intend to do, as I practice the more painterly style of work suggested by...
Celebrity heads 4
Another round of celebrity heads this week, building up my portfolio of portrait work. This time around I was going for some additional challenges — dramatic lighting, expressions, hats, facial hair. On some of these I think the likeness aspect has fallen a little short, but I don't hate any of them...
Celebrity heads 3
Am I back in the saddle after vacation? Partially. I'm going a little slowly on art right now because I have additional demands on my evenings, but it's still important to keep at it. This set of faces I started while on one of the long flights, and just wrapped up. These are mostly not great, but as they say, quantity...
Celebrity heads 2
More celebrity portraits, continuing my practice going from the stripped down head model to likeness. I think most of these look pretty good. From the top-left, going clockwise: Wes Studi (from Last of the Mohicans), Michael Jai White (from Black Dynamite), Ann Hathaway, Toby Jones (from...
Heads up
I was a little disappointed by the quality of my faces in the study group heads month concentration. The structural foundation is solid, and I'm sure it will help with gesture drawing, but in terms of building to portraits, most of my drawings were unrecognizable, except for the Aftyn ones. I decided to keep practicing...
Emma
My last round of figures for Love Life Drawing triggered the instructor Marek to challenge me to do a value study of a clothed person to demonstrate a fundamental painting technique of dividing the subject into just 2 values. I had taken that literally, dividing the entire scene into 2 values, but he suggested using 2...
Poirot
Portrait of actor David Suchet as the great detective Hercule Poirot. That is one of the truly great match-ups of actor to role. His Poirot is a fussy, perfectionist genius. I've seen many actors take on the role, but his performance is the first time I felt like I understood the character. I loved the warm, moody...
Helena Bonham Carter
Portrait of Helena Bonham Carter, in a still from 1985's A Room With a View. I was going a little crazy drawing rib cage after rib cage and needed a break. This was a friend's suggestion, and it made for a very nice diversion. My sketches have progressed to a point where they generally work pretty well, and these...
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Faye Wong revisited
Feeling dragged way down by the side-effects of vaccination this weekend, I decided to revisit an earlier work, rather than make something from scratch. Challenges here were to pick my own colors and to force myself to accept visible brush strokes. Each was a journey. Pushing myself off the color sampling training...
Let the Right One In
Charcoal portrait of actor Lina Leandersson as Eli in Let the Right One In. To my way of thinking, it's the best vampire movie ever made. I love that movie so much. If you haven't seen it, now is the time. And don't be fooled by the American remake (Let Me In); that thing is an embarrassment to all involved parties...
Cliff Steele
Drawing of Cliff Steele, AKA Robotman, from the Doom Patrol TV show. I really enjoy that show's skewed vision (as well as the books it's based on), and Cliff is an anchor player in that. The drawing itself is okay. I wonder if it would be better with a much lighter hand on the shading. I'm still trying to find my voice...
Stephen McHattie
Loose portrait of actor Stephen McHattie from one of my favorite movies, Pontypool. This drawing really wanted to get away from me. I had to start over several times to get it to any level of quality with different shading styles. It kept not capturing the expression, which still doesn't read as clearly as the...
Jonathan Banks
Contour portrait of actor Jonathan Banks, one of the stars of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. He's always got a tremendous, world-weary expression that was fun to draw. The contours here are decent -- I lost control of them in a few places. But I am improving at making them long, continuous curves. A lot of the...
Matt Smith
This is a portrait of actor Matt Smith, from a moment in Last Night in Soho. I have decided to switch from doing figure studies for a while to doing a series of ink portraits. Some of my previous efforts I think are better than this one, but it gets the likeness pretty well. I think the problem with this one generally...
Faye Wong
Sketch portrait of actor and singer Faye Wong, done in Procreate on iPad. Aside from the background plate, this is all a single color, going for that ball-point pen look. This is my first one of these ink shading jobs that feels like it's starting to really get there. Having the hashing follow facial contours makes all...
Rachel Bloom
Portrait of actress Rachel Bloom, star of the musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I loved that show. So let's talk about the painting. Freehand sketch that I then compared to the reference photo. I had it pretty accurate! I came up a tiny bit too wide on the lower curve of her hip, but the rest was pretty spot on. I was...
Michelle Yeoh
Digital portrait of actress Michelle Yeoh, from a publicity still for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yeoh is riding high right now on the wave of positive buzz from her latest project, the reportedly wonderful Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. I look forward to seeing that one. Yeoh is a wonderful actor who lends...
The Mummy Returns
Painting of a still from The Mummy Returns, featuring the wonderful Rachel Weisz, one of my favorite actors. This is done with the acrylic tools in Procreate on iPad. Are my brush strokes showing? Yes, they are! I'm pretty happy with the result here. I've had some other pieces at this distance that didn't work, but I...
Sauna
Digital portrait of Finnish actor Ville Virtanen, done in Procreate on iPad. The reference is a production still from a very cool movie called Sauna. Those glasses he's wearing really jumped out at me. They are probably my favorite prop in any movie ever made. I painted this one with the default acrylic brush. I have...
Anna Kendrick
Charcoal portrait of actress Anna Kendrick, done in Procreate on the iPad. I tried doing the sketch layers in charcoal this time, and while I think they are not disasters, I didn't like it as the clean lines you get from pencil or ink sketches. I was trying to eyeball colors at first, and it wasn't really working. I...
Pedro Pascal
Portrait of Pedro Pascal, done in Procreate on the iPad using charcoal brushes. The reference image is from the movie Prospect, which is a great piece of cinema veritas for a grungy, awful future. I think the piece turned out pretty good, although the helmet reflections are weak. It probably wasn't obvious, but the last...
Donnie Yen
Charcoal portrait of martial arts superstar Donnie Yen, done in Procreate on the iPad. There's something bugging me about this one. It doesn't feel right, but I can't put my finger on what it is. Mechanically, there's a handful of problems. I picked an orange base layer color that was deliberately outlandish, something...
Adam Driver
This week I was practicing sketches of heads using a simplified form of the Loomis method. At first I was pretty unimpressed with my efforts, so I went and collected some reference pictures. That gave better results, particularly my little sketch of Adam Driver. It was good enough that I decided to elaborate it into a...
Emilia Clarke
Another charcoal portrait, this time of actress Emilia Clarke, who will probably always be chased by the name Khaleesi. Here, she is portraying a young Sarah Connor from Terminator Genisys. Not a good movie! She has some pretty amazing lips, though. That's something I've been trying to work on in my faces lately. I...
This is America
Charcoal portrait of Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, from the video This is America. This was my first attempt at a charcoal portrait. This kind of work doesn't really allow for blending, which I tend to do a lot of. I wouldn't have been able to pull it off without my recent work in trying to capture shapes...
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Quick painting of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator of Fleabag and a bunch of other brilliant television properties. I fell in love with the slightly worried look she projected in the picture. I did this at the end of a week of practice sketches, none of which is good enough to share. I wanted to have something to show for...
Danny Avidan
Ink sketch of Danny Avidan, AKA Danny Sexbang, of Ninja Sex Party. The reference is a really great concert photograph by Matt Henry. He's a fun, flamboyant figure at the front of an excellent, nerdy band. I'm still trying to work through hatching for shading. Here and there I get some good results, but I don't think...
Indy
Sketch portrait of Harrison Ford as the iconic Indiana Jones. I went much heavier on shade than I have ever done in a sketch before. The blue color gives it a kind of ball point pen look. I'm not going to be kicking Emil Ferris off the book stands any time soon, but I kind of dig the textured look.
Babish
Another sketch and practice with cross hatching, this time of Andrew Rea, AKA Babish. He's a chef on YouTube, and an inspiration for my growth as a cook over the last year. When I do these, I typically will do a very rough (and horrible!) sketch just to figure out the gross shapes. Then over top of that I'll do a...
My wife is a gangster
A long time ago, I was an avid importer of DVDs from other world regions. Some of my favorite imports were South Korean movies. They spun a series of huge hits: Shiri, Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Save the Green Planet. Discovering those first hand required churning through piles of less successful flicks. My Wife...
Melora Creager
With a little experience under my belt, I wanted to return to some of my early painting failures, to see if I could get my arms around them. This is a monochrome portrait of Melora Creager, leader of my favorite band, Rasputina. I'd link to them, but they basically no longer have a web presence at this point. The...
Joker
Portrait of Heath Ledger as the Joker from Dark Knight. It's a fantastic movie, just shy of perfect, and his portrayal was magnificent. I don't think I've seen a more clear representation of that character. I really like how this painting turned out, with all the funky textures and stark lighting. I went through some...
Homelander
A portrait of Homelander from The Boys, sneering. The actor, Anthony Starr, does a remarkable job showing us the internal anger that seethes within the character. I figured a cartoon-style rendering made sense, but the suit wouldn't read without some of the minute texture detail on it. I hope my solution works...
Sohla El-Waylly
Another cartoon-style portrait, this time of my favorite YouTube chef, Sohla El-Waylly. I'm pretty happy with this one. Check out that brick texture! I figured out a little trick to represent the albedo on her glasses that sure wouldn't work in a physical painting. I'm debating whether I should have simplified the...
Jareth, the goblin king
An attempt to make a simplified version of Jareth, the Goblin King from Labyrinth. I think David Bowie is one of the best entertainers to ever live, so it was a real treat to do this. It didn't turn out as good as I hoped. Blonde hair continue to be problematic for me. The line work is not as clean as I wanted, either...
Condola Rashad
Portrait of actress Condola Rashad, one of the stars of Billions. I swear this woman glows from the inside. Like the rest of my Krita color work, this was composed by piling on splotches of pigment and blending. It's a laborious process, but gives each region distinct depth. The hair and jacket look pretty good, I...
Cassandra Peterson
I have always been cagey about doing nudes — some childhood psychological damage, no doubt. A friend suggested I do a reclining nude portrait, though, and my mind went to Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She did some photo sets before settling on the character who would make her famous. She is an...