Another 30 minute drapery study. It's a little rougher than I would have liked but not bad.

Another page of Hogarth copies mostly focusing on legs and feet this time.

This one feels a little incomplete. I can see where I drew in some cloth but didn't finish drawing it in and there is no color. I think that I was thrown by how complicated dome of the folds where. That's part of the problem with fabric is that unlike anatomy there aren't any rules or landmarks that stay consistent from image to image you just kind of have to muscle through. 

After three hours I think that this came out pretty good. I think that my version is has a little more contrast than the original and that's something that I'll need to watch out for in the future.

I really like how this one came out. There are some areas that could use some more attention but for 30 minutes I think that this is pretty good. I was able to get both the white and the orange parts of the cloth colored correctly and having the shadows and the highlights looking good. 

Hour two of my Liepke copy. Got started on doing some color and refining the face. I think that in another hour this one will look pretty good.

 The fabric was kind of grey in the picture so that coupled with the fact that there is a lot of fabric doing a lot I decided to go monochromatic for this one. I think that doing that helped me focus on capturing the movement of the cloth and there was a lot of movement to capture. Most areas came out pretty good some need a little work but overall not bad.

So in my continuing effort to improve my portrait painting I decided to do some copies of good portraits starting with one of my favorite painters, Liepke. This is the start of a copy of his painting Cascading Hair and it's about an hour in. Not much else to say at this point.

 Something a little simpler for a change. No figure here, just the cloth and that made this picture much easier to work on. I was able to spend more time working on getting the folds and the color right and not have to worry about any kind of figure giving me any issues. Although the picture looks a little boring without a figure in it I think that the cloth study came out pretty good.

After about five hours I think I'm going to call him done. I considered giving some more time to the clothes and and background but that wasn't the focus of the piece so I decided to leave the clothes pretty rough and just add some flat colors to the background. After working on this piece I think I have a better idea where my strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to portraits.

 This one isn't great but it is an improvement over the last one. I think it helps that this one was mostly drapery and the figure is not the main focus of the photo.

Another page of Hogarth copies because I have a double shift today and I don't have time to scan in stuff from my sketch book. This is the third page that I did.

 I think this may the worst painting I've done in a while. It was just one of those mornings where nothing seems to work and just putting pen to tablet seems like an accomplishment. I half assed the figure and I half assed the clothes. I've found that when this kind of thing happens the best thing to do is pick your self up, brush off the dust and learn from what you did wrong. Because some times we learn more from our failures than our successes.

So my friends are dragging me out of my apartment on my day off (auuggggh, the sunshine burnses my skin) so I'll be away from my computer. And that means away from Photoshop so not much painting is going to happen today. Though I will be taking my sketch book and to quote Charlton Heston  " from my cold dead hands". Lots of drawing still gonna happen. In the mean time my second page of Hogarth copies. I think that by the end of this I was finding a good balance of speed and quality.